Heart of Stone
by Skybluebirdy
Summary: Holding hands on that awful beach. Not a bad way to start off their one life together. Of course, that doesn't fix anything. Is the Doctor really still the Doctor, or just a cheap copy? They have a lot to figure out, but between the living statues chasing them, and a secret that should've died with the Time Lords, they may not have the opportunity to even try. A Tentoo/Rose Story.
1. Rocky Beginnings

**Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing, and all the characters you recognize belong to the BBC. I'm just having fun with them for a bit. And, since they're off in a parallel universe, I can't imagine anyone will mind terribly.**

The first in what I'm tentatively dubbing the "Pete's World" archives. I hope to finish this one off and write quite a few more in the same universe, but we'll just see how this one goes first. Reviews welcome and encouraged. Enjoy! =)

* * *

 _BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!_

Rose Tyler groaned and fumbled for the snooze button on the alarm clock beside her bed, too comfortable and too recently woken from sleep to muster the willpower to lift her head from the pillows. She jabbed blindly at the interface, and, after a moment, the beeping subsided.

Sighing, she forced one eye open just far enough to read the backlit screen of the clock. The blinking readout flashed 7:30, and as she watched it flipped to 7:31. Burying her head in the pillows for a moment, she threw off the covers and half-slid, half-rolled out of bed. She shuffled to the window and threw open the curtains. Bright sunlight streamed into the room, its golden light mixing with the pinkish tinge of the walls and floor, and briefly blinding her. Rose rubbed her eyes, blinking away spots. As her eyes adjusted, she stumbled to the closet, tripping over a mixed conglomeration of newspapers and CDs strewn across the floor. She steadied herself by not so gracefully colliding with the door, and bracing herself against the doorknob.

She had been determined to keep her room clean in this world, if only to prevent accidents like this, but as the months had dragged on and she had gotten steadily more consumed in her quest to find a way back to the Doctor, her room's tidiness had fallen by the wayside. Frustrated, she tucked a strand of unruly hair behind her ear, and opened the closet. At random, she selected a set of clothing and changed hurriedly.

As she did so, she reflected on just how similar her room really was to the one she'd had in her own world.

Everything was pink: the walls, the floor, the sheets, the pillows, the drapes, everything. When she and her mum had first been stranded in what the Doctor had dubbed, "Pete's world", her not-quite-father had provided rooms for the both of them and tried to make them comfortable. They had sufficed for a time, but it hadn't taken long for Jackie to start complaining. Rose smiled, remembering her mum's typically loud protests.

Despite the fact that their quarters were larger than they had ever been on the Powell Estate, Jackie explained, very loudly, that "We've had enough changes in our lives already without living in a new house as well!" Faced with the unstoppable onslaught of an angry Jackie Tyler, Pete quickly began working on something called, "Operation Jackie-in-the-box". He spent months with his workers building an exact replica of their house and belongings, right down to the notes on the fridge. Even the furniture looked the same, as if someone had gone to her old room, grabbed her stuff, and dropped it in this replica.

Rose opened the door to her room and walked to the bathroom. She flicked on the light switch and hastily ran a brush through her hair. She stopped when she saw a picture on the mirror. The familiar lines of a faded blue police box stared back at her. She felt sad as she stared at it, and idly traced its outline with a finger.

She'd placed little reminders all over the house, but for some reason she couldn't quite explain, this one always caught her off guard. It had been so long since she'd seen that old box, nearly two years in fact, but she'd never stopped searching, never stopped trying to get back.

She quickly returned to brushing her hair, knowing she'd be late if she didn't leave soon. Still, at the back of her mind, Rose felt she was missing something. Something important. She briefly glanced at her reflection in the mirror, then, satisfied, she grabbed her jacket, which was hanging from the door, waiting for her, and rushed down to the kitchen.

"Dad, we're going to be late! Hurry up!" Rose shouted, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"Good morning, Rose." came a familiar voice from behind her. She froze in mid pour, while the little voice in the back of her head, telling her she was missing something, kicked into top gear. She turned slowly to face the speaker.

The Doctor was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in blue- and white-striped pajamas, sipping his own coffee through a bendy straw, and perusing a section of newspaper. He looked up at her, "Is everything all right?" The mug dropped from her hand, as Rose flew to the table and all but tackled the Doctor with a hug. The sound of shattering glass, tumbling chairs, and one very surprised Time Lord split the air.

Half a moment later, Rose demanded, "How did you get here?"

"What, don't you remember?" the Doctor responded, winded and sprawled on his back, but with the faintest touch of a smile crossing his face, "Pete flew out to get us. Your mother talked our ears off for half the night, and we finally got some sleep when someone remembered to get her a cup of tea, which I promptly spiked with a relaxing agent. Simple enough really, she was so busy chatting away, I don't think she even noticed."

"No, I mean how did you get _here_?"

"Time-stream jumping, the reality bomb, Davros... the Daleks." he said, the last coming noticeably slower and more hesitantly. He stared at the floor for a moment, his mind wandering. Then, he pushed to his feet, and continued quickly, "Anyway, I _think_ that's the lack of sleep talking, am I right?" without pausing for an answer, he proceeded talking at 90 miles per hour and started picking up the fallen chairs, "Now _that_ , that's a hard thing to forget. Of course, it's to be expected, your human brains can only process so much at one time."

Rose wasn't listening. At the mention of the Daleks, the jumbled puzzle pieces of missing information clicked into place. She stared at the Doctor, the half-human, half-Time Lord Doctor.

Noting her stare, the Doctor paused in his supersonic cleanup and straightened, "What?"

Before she could respond, Pete Tyler strode into the kitchen. He buttoned his jacket, and said distractedly, "Good morning, you two. I'm not interrupting anything, am I? Like you said, Rose, we're going to be late." He looked up, his eyes wandering around the room, taking in the spilled coffee and the table and chairs knocked askew from Rose's enthusiastic greeting, "What happened in here?"

"Limitations of the brain." the Doctor called over his shoulder, picking up a dripping, coffee-stained rug and carrying it off in the direction of the washroom.

Pete watched him go, then turned to Rose, "What's he going on about?"

"Nothing." Rose responded, staring after the Doctor.

He followed her gaze, "Riiight, uh, well, we'd better go. Jackie wants us to pick up some more of that tea the Doctor gave her last night."

Rose scoffed exasperatedly, "We have _loads_ of tea. And, wasn't that the one he put the Benadryl in?"

Pete sighed, "Yes it was. Your mother always drinks tea before bed, but after how well she slept from it last night she's convinced it's the best sleep remedy she's ever had. Now she won't rest until she's had more."

"Can't you just tell her?"

He looked at her dubiously, "You want me to tell your mother that the Doctor drugged her to get her to stop talking?"

"All right, to the store it is then." Rose remarked, grabbing the car keys off the counter and rushing out to the car.

* * *

After Rose and her father stopped to pick up the tea, they drove to a tall building that shadowed all around it. As Rose slammed the door to the car shut, she looked up at its massive walls. A large "T" was emblazoned on its surface.

Torchwood Tower.

Once it had been an all powerful government branch specialized to defend against alien threats, now it was staffed and run by the people. Fortunately, with the change in command came a change in policy as well. Torchwood was no longer an overtly aggressive line of defense, but instead took a more cautious, less confrontational approach to potential alien threats. The result was a Torchwood less feared by the masses, and more open to new ideas.

Pete had joined Torchwood first, just after the Cybermen had attempted to seize his world. His personal vendetta against the Cybermen for the death of his world's Jackie Tyler, and his innovative thinking had lent themselves well to Torchwood's unique goals. After Rose was stranded in Pete's World she also decided to join Torchwood, given her firsthand experience with aliens. Both Tylers had risen through the ranks of the institution to become important individuals amongst those who tracked suspicious alien activity and technology.

Rose led the way to the building, Pete trailing a pace behind. As they reached the doors, a pair of guards stopped them. Rose thought she remembered the two from a staff briefing some time ago, but couldn't put names to their faces. They obviously remembered her however, if their sudden straightening postures were to be judged by. Nevertheless, they still demanded an ID before they could pass into the building. Rose and Pete both pulled out their identification and flashed them at the guards, who immediately unlocked the doors and let them pass.

Inside was a bustle of activity; black-clad, pinch-faced men and women roved this way and that carrying stacks of paper and motioning to one another, lab-coated technicians flew from station to station with test results and numerous questions, a few badge-wearing officials stood apart from the chaos looking over the operations with a keen eye. The two of them pushed through the throng of people, and crowded inside a passing lift.

They exited on the fourth floor and followed a dizzying series of tunnel-like passages. Rooms branched off on every side, further adding to the confusing layout of the floor. According to the builders, this was designed to give the maximum space for offices and departments, but in reality it doubled as a very good intruder defense, and a terrible first day for any new employees, as newcomers and veterans alike frequently lost their way in the maze of corridors.

As they passed a sign pointing to the administration section, Pete grumbled, "What good are signs when they all point to the same general location? There could be an army lost in here and we'd never even know." They came upon a flustered-looking woman staring at each of three paths of a fork in the hallway.

"Are you all right, miss…" Rose began, smiling at the girl.

"Carol Johnson, ma'am. I work in the new Specialized Developments section." she replied, quickly straightening and trying to regain a modicum of professionalism and calm.

"My name's Rose, Rose Tyler, and this is my dad, Pete. Nice to meet you, Carol Johnson."

"And you, Miss Tyler." they briefly shook hands, and Carol returned to peering down each hallway carefully.

Rose smiled, "You aren't lost by any chance are you?"

Carol turned red and mumbled, "Um, yes."

"Great, so are we. We can be lost together." Rose grinned, "Come on, let's go this way." she gestured at the right-hand path.

"Are you sure that's the right way?" Carol asked hesitantly.

"No, but it's better than sitting 'round 'ere." Rose replied, and set off down the corridor.

They continued through many winding, twisting halls, and passed more than a few other lost employees on their way. By the time they reached their destination, a score of people were trailing behind them, each of them with varying degrees of impatience and fatigue. Several of them had been there for some hours unable to find their way, and one or two had been there since the day before.

"We need to start issuing maps to all personnel." Pete remarked as the grateful employees dispersed and hurried off to their stations, "This is becoming a nightmare."

"Or at least put in emergency supplies." Rose joked, "I think we passed a dinosaur skeleton in there."

As they walked past rows of occupied cubicles, a few formally dressed staff members followed them and began hammering them with questions, and bringing them up to speed on the latest developments.

"We need your initials here, here, and a signature here—"

"If I could just take a moment of your time—"

"Miss Tyler, this showed up on your desk twenty minutes ago."

"Sir, you're needed down in the weapon testing facility for your approval on—"

"Danny, stop waving these lab reports in my face, and take them down to Margaret Jones." Pete said irritatedly to a lanky red-head who was trying to get his attention with an official-looking paper and clipboard.  
"But she told me to bring them to you." the red-haired man protested.

"Well what does she want me to do with them?"

"She needs your thumbprint here, and your signature here for—"

Pete interrupted him with a wave, "Yes, yes, fine." He scribbled his signature and marked the papers irritably, and the man scurried off.

Ignoring the crowding throng for the moment, Rose turned to her father and inquired loudly, drowning out the babbling of the officials, "What's on the agenda today?"

"I think they were going to pull us into a briefing for some new aliens they found wandering through the solar system." Pete responded, raising his voice over the surrounding people.

"Same old, same old then." Rose sighed, "The way they treat the discovery of a new type of alien, we might as well just watch the news stations' reactions on the telly. It's all big threats, and security plans."

They passed through a security door to the next section, and Rose continued, "Still, it could be worse I suppose. At least we haven't got UNIT breathing down our necks—"

She abruptly stopped and stared at the sight before her.

Sitting in a chair behind a desk, with his feet propped up on the table, and talking animatedly into a phone, was the Doctor. As she watched, he suddenly hung up the phone, and jumped out of the seat.

"Put that down! You could hurt somebody." he shouted, startling a bulky, young officer, "Oh, blimey, you would think Torchwood of all organizations would be more careful with this stuff, but no," he snatched the piece of machinery the surprised official was carrying and held it up to his eyes, inspecting it carefully, "You lot just blunder around, picking up whatever technology you find. You see blinking warning lights and shiny keep out signs and think 'Ooh, let's go touch it.' Humans, sometimes it's a wonder you survive."

"What does it do?" the man asked civilly, seemingly miffed by the Doctor's reaction. Rose guessed this wasn't the first time the Doctor had caused a scene that day.

"This," the Doctor explained, flipping it over in his hands, "is a relic of the Xyrell Empire during the height of their military prowess." he looked up at the man, "With one wrong word or touch you could've blown a hole in the side of your tiny little world."

The employee Rose had met earlier, Carol Johnson, was standing nearby and clutching a different box-shaped piece of metal tightly. She looked down at it, then at the Doctor, then back to the box in rapid succession before asking in a worried voice, "And what's this, Doctor?"

The Doctor glanced at the box for a moment, then replied, " _That_ is just a lunchbox."

"What, seriously?"

"Oh, yeah. What, you didn't really think humans were the only species out there to bring their lunches with them, did you?"

Spying the two Tylers silently observing him, he waved them over and greeted them exuberantly, "Pete, Rose, hello! Good thing you're here, this lot could blow us out to the ends of the universe at any moment."

He continued flipping the alien artifact nonchalantly, as Pete looked on uneasily. Finally, he asked the Doctor, "What are you going to do with that?"

The Doctor looked down at the relic, "Oh, this? It's harmless now."

"I thought you said it could tear a hole in the Earth?"

"It could. Before. Past tense."

"What did you do to it?"

"Simple, I took out the batteries. Here, take a look." he said, grinning, as he tossed the roughly spherical device to Pete.

A shallow indentation on the back of the device revealed a small opening with copper-colored wiring sticking out and a space for a square-shaped battery. The Doctor brandished the tiny metallic cube at them, then took a hammer from the desk and smashed it into a fine powder.

"There we go. Couldn't make it run now even if you wanted to." said the Doctor, blowing the metal residue into the air and brushing off his hands.

"Doctor, why are you here?" Rose asked suddenly.

The Doctor and Pete exchanged apprehensive glances and the Doctor replied, "I thought I could, I don't know, help out or something. I mean, you can see what some of these operatives of yours are doing, they're a danger to themselves with this stuff."

"We've managed to survive long enough without your help." Rose said matter-of-factly.

"Doctor, could you give us a minute?" Pete asked after a moment.

He nodded and strode over to one of the outside windows, beginning to rifle through a loose pile of uncatalogued technology.

Pete led Rose a little ways off, and turned to face her.

"What is he doing here?" Rose demanded.

"Well, last night we were talking, and we both agreed that he should come work here for a while. You know, make our jobs easier, and still keep himself occupied with something that's at least vaguely familiar."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"Honestly, Rose, I didn't think this would be an issue. What's gotten into you?"

She looked past Pete's shoulder to the Doctor. He was absently fiddling with a strange harmonica-like device and staring dejectedly out the window and up at the sky.

"It's not him." Rose said shortly.

"What, the Doctor? Of course it's him." Pete protested, "He may be half human, but that is definitely the Doctor."

"No, I mean it's not _him_. He's… different. Like something's changed."

Pete turned to look at the Doctor then shook his head and replied, "Something _has_ changed. You of all people should know that things aren't going to go back to normal after just one night."

"He's used to change though. He's never been like this."

Pete scoffed, "Give the man some credit, he's practically had his entire life turned upside down."

Rose's brow furrowed in confusion, "What do you mean?"

"He's stuck here. He's not travelling, he's not saving the day, and _you're_ barely looking at him. You can't expect him to be the same when he's had everything he used to do and everyone he used to know stripped away. And since he doesn't have his TARDIS anymore, there's not much chance of him going off to see the dinosaurs or meet new aliens before teatime, now is there? Unless he can do that, you're just going to have to get used to this new Doctor."

He patted her shoulder for a moment reassuringly, then walked back in the direction they had entered from.

"Wait, where are you going?" Rose called after him.

He turned back to face her briefly, and replied, "I've got a briefing to attend on," he consulted a piece of paper, "species 159-7, apparently."

"We're both supposed to be there." Rose pointed out.

Pete waved his hand dismissively and continued walking, "As of this moment you're on sick leave. Right, Johnson?" he addressed this last question to Carol, who was passing nearby, still holding the alien lunchbox.

"Oh, um, yes sir." she responded quickly, setting down the box on a nearby desk and tapping a few keys on the computer, before straightening and confirming, "Sick leave registered in the system, sir. I hope you feel better soon, Miss Tyler."

Rose watched as Pete left, irritated by and grateful of the liberty he took to make sure she adjusted. She took a deep breath and went to the window where the Doctor stood, still staring out at the sky.

"Hello." Rose said in the most cheerful voice she could muster. It sounded strained even to her ears, but she hoped he wouldn't notice.

The Doctor's gaze lingered on her for a moment, before flitting around, searching for something. After a second he asked, "Where'd Pete go?"

"He had a, um, a meeting thing about the new aliens." Rose replied absently, brushing back her hair with a hand.

"Shouldn't you be there with him?"

"He thinks I should take the day off."

"Oh. Good. Well… good." he responded awkwardly. He stared off into space for a moment before seeming to come back to himself and gawkily adding, "Well, I guess I'll see you later then."

"Hold on a minute," Rose countered, "What are you going to do?"

"Well they've got an awful lot of stuff that needs sorting." the Doctor answered, waving around a bizarrely shaped contraption.

"What kind of stuff?"

"You know just… stuff."

"It's a wonder we ever managed without you." Rose replied trenchantly, the ludicrousness of the situation bringing back memories of similar banter.

"I'm fine, Rose, really. Look I've got my stuff, and my things to sort. Oh, this one makes sandwiches." he said in affected fascination, before tossing the device into a nearby disposal chute.

Rose knew he was trying to deflect the conversation, and the tightness in his smile said he knew that she knew it. She glanced at the heaping piles of mechanical thingamabobs, before saying, "How long will it take you to sort through this? Ten minutes, twenty? You're already bored out of your mind. No, I'm not leaving you here to terrorize everyone else with your questions and mad ideas."

"I can keep my questions to myself." the Doctor protested.

"Please, you're like a kid in a candy store." Rose scoffed, " And right now, the clerks can't deal with a sugar-crazed kid. Come on, you could use a day off too."

"But it's my first day." he pointed out.

"Well, you always said you'd hate getting a job. Now stop making up excuses and let's go." Rose said, somewhat exasperated.

He didn't seem to have an answer for that, so she grabbed his hand and started pulling him towards the exit. He followed immediately, his intense boredom with what he'd been doing evident by his almost bouncy stride the farther from the cubicles and desks they got.

Rose lead them through the twisty passages of the building and to the elevator, which they used to reach the first floor, and exit the tower. It seemed strange to her to be dragging _him_ along behind _her_ , as he was usually the one to be pulling her off towards whatever—likely dangerous—place they were going next.

"Where are we going?" the Doctor asked after they had put some distance between Torchwood and themselves.

"Not sure," Rose said, scanning the streets. A neon diner sign made her stop and turn, "Fish and chips." she announced, "We're going to get fish and chips."


	2. The Lonely Assassins

By the time the slightly grumpy, chubby waitress brought out their food, thunder clouds had rolled in and began slowly dropping their heavy load onto the dry city streets below. The chips were incredibly salty, and the fish was a little soggy, but neither of them complained. They ate in silence, the pitter-patter-patter of rain on the window beating a staccato rhythm in counterpoint to the occasional clang and scrape of silverware on plates.

Rose put her fork down and stared out into the gray, darkened, rain-slicked streets and alleys. Cars whizzed by, spraying water and mud across sidewalks and bedraggled pedestrians. The few shoppers and wandering people that were still in the downpour were all huddled beneath umbrellas and bundled into dark-hued rain-proof jackets.

A shaft of lightning flashed through the sky, and an answering crack of thunder rolled across the diner, shaking it and rattling the dishes and customers alike.

"That's shaping up to be quite a storm out there." Rose commented, absently trying to make conversation.

"Not afraid of a little rain are you?" the Doctor queried, stuffing a chunk of fish in his mouth.

Her gaze flicked back to the Doctor, and she couldn't help smiling a little as he wolfed down his food like a growing teenager. "No, are you?"

He chewed his food thoughtfully, before swallowing and replying, "Oh, no, of course not. What could be _in_ the rain however…" He trailed off, staring out the window for a long moment, before returning his attention to his meal and shovelling chips into his mouth.

Rose herself had barely touched her own meal. She pushed the food around her plate, occasionally nibbling on a chip or two, but otherwise mostly just picking at it. The Doctor by contrast had already finished his plate, and as he gulped down the last of his chips he suddenly piped up, "Are you going to finish that?"

Rose raised an eyebrow. "How can you still be hungry?" she asked incredulously, but pushed her plate towards him nevertheless.

"Thanks." he mumbled almost incoherently, through a mouthful of fried fish.

As soon as he had swallowed he immediately protested, "Oi, give me a little slack here. In a way, it's like I've never eaten before. Normally regeneration has, well, you know, bits of sort of floaty, glowy energy left over," he waved his hands and fingers to aid in the explanation, "But what I went through was basically the equivalent of having my hand cut off again—you remember that at least, right? All those Sycorax in the sky. Oh, what a Christmas. Love that hand." he said, smiling broadly and waggling his hand at Rose. Turning serious again, he continued, "Anyway, it's like having my hand cut off again, but multiplied about a hundred times."

"But what does all that have to do with you eating like a starving schoolboy?" Rose interrupted, smiling despite herself as the Doctor continued waving his arms around, shovelling down his food, and acting completely mental.

"I was getting to that." the Doctor explained, wiping crumbs and bits of fish from his face with his napkin, "So, normally, Time Lords tend to sleep a lot after regenerating. Which, you of course noticed last time. Sorry about that." he looked a little sheepish for a moment, but quickly went on, "In any case, most of that latent energy gets siphoned off naturally and dissipates during the first few days after regenerating, but it still takes a phenomenal amount of energy to recover after the initial regeneration. Other than sleep, food is by far the best choice to replenish that energy. Except maybe hooking yourself up to the local power grid. Did that once, can't recommend it. You get all sort of singed and smell like barbecue for weeks. But, basically, food and sleep are critical for a smooth recovery. I'm simply trying to make sure that this time, I stay awake and relatively useful in case something important pops up."

Rose was not, in any way, surprised to hear the Doctor say he'd once hooked himself up to a power station. To the patrons at the nearby tables it was utter nonsense, and their furtive, disapproving glances at their table told her so, but to Rose, this was simply the Doctor being the Doctor.

She tried to imagine what he'd look like if he did strap himself to the power lines, and had a cartoonish image of electricity arcing around him while his hair stood on end and singed-black burn marks appeared on his face pop into her head almost immediately. She wondered for a second if that's how his hair stood up like it did normally, but eventually discounted the idea.

As she reflected on the Doctor's last sentence she realized he was genuinely worried he might suddenly nod off and leave the Earth, leave her, in potential peril again.

"Tell you what," she said in what was meant to be a reassuringly cheerful tone, "if you fall asleep and aliens start bearing down on us, I'll make sure to shout a little louder, all right?"

He looked at her, his expression softening slightly. He opened his mouth to say something, and suddenly went rigid as lightning flashed and lit up the sidewalks and alleyways outside the window.

Rose turned to look, but the streets were difficult to see amidst the gloom. In the split second of illumination from the lightning she thought she saw a statue staring back at them. When the light faded, the darkness enveloped it once more. "What is it," Rose asked, turning back to face the Doctor, "What's wrong?"

"We've got to go." he said, peering through the window, his eyes narrowing, " _Now_."

Without waiting for any type of response, he grabbed her hand and dragged her towards the exit. They barreled past waiters and customers, the Doctor hurtling for the door as quickly as a frightened jackrabbit, pulling Rose along behind him. Amidst the shouts and protests of angry patrons and the disgruntled hostess, they reached the door and, in a flash, were out on the rain-swept streets of the city.

The Doctor did not stop once there however. He sprinted up the street, spraying muddied water across everything in his wake. Rose had no idea what they were running to, or from, but she glanced a look behind them as often as she could. Although, she wasn't even certain what she was looking for. They ran for several blocks, never once stopping as they pelted across sidewalks and roads, leaping over curbs and drains, until the Doctor suddenly dived into a side alley, dragging Rose in with him.

As they huddled in the alley, the Doctor put a finger to his lips and whispered, "Keep very still, and very quiet. If it can't hear or see us, then that'll give me a few minutes to think of something."

He squinted, shielding his eyes from the rain as he peered around the corner into the shadowed street.

"Doctor, _what_ are we running from?" Rose asked in a hushed voice, the odd tingly mixture of fear and excitement she always got when they were in danger rushing through her.

"A statue. At least when you see it." the Doctor replied ambiguously.

Rose was confused, "We're running from a statue?"

"Yes. But, it's only a statue _while you're looking at it._ " He put a little extra emphasis on those last words.

"What happens when you're not?"

"Then it can kill you." he answered darkly, before explaining, "They're called the Weeping Angels. They're quantum-locked creatures; when they are seen, they turn to stone, but when nobody is looking…"

"What? They come to life or something?" Rose asked, prodding him for details.

"For the short answer, yes. Although, technically, they're alive even while they are a statue. You know the saying 'a watched pot never boils'? In this case, a watched Angel never moves, and that is very good for us."

Rose nodded, mentally filing away nonessential questions about this strange biological quirk for a time when they weren't in imminent danger, "But what do they want us for?"

"The Angels feed off of the potential energy of their victims. The touch of a Weeping Angel can send you back in time. They live off the energy from all the days you might have lived."

"So, we're some Angel statue creature's lunch?"

"Basically, yeah." the Doctor replied, still scanning the empty streets for any sign of the Angel.

Rose turned, looking down the alleyway for a moment, and went as still, presumably, as the statue they were fleeing from.

"Doctor," Rose said, her voice wavering slightly with trepidation, "I think I found the Angel."

The Doctor whirled around in her direction. Rose was staring into the shadowed recesses of the alley, and there, half-visible against the red-brick wall, was the stone form of the Angel.

Its face was covered by its hands. Almost as if it was afraid to look at them, Rose thought as she called behind her anxiously, "Doctor, what do I do?"

He cautiously crept nearer, and put a hand on her shoulder, "First, don't panic. As long as you keep your eyes on it it can't move. Second, don't blink. Angels are exceptionally fast, so don't even blink."

"Oh, thanks." Rose said sarcastically, eyes itching as she slowly alternated blinking with only one at a time, "That's _so_ reassuring."

"Keep calm," he reminded her, "Everything is going to be all right. I want you to back up slowly. Don't turn around. Just keep backing up."

She took a tentative step back, and the Doctor guided her slowly as she did as he instructed. When she reached the mouth of the alley where they had entered from, she stopped.

"What do we do now?" Rose asked, still keeping her eyes locked firmly on the Angel. Her eyes felt like they were drying out and she had to resist the urge to close them; alternating blinking wasn't helping much either, it just made them feel like they were drying out faster.

"On the count of three I want you to run." came the Doctor's response from somewhere behind her.

Surprised, Rose almost turned around to face him. Almost.

"Won't the Angel be on us as soon as we start running?"

"Possibly." he replied evasively.

"Not much of a plan then, is it?"

"It's a bit unfinished, yeah. I'm working on it. Ready?"

"Whenever you are." she shot back.

"Brilliant. One…"

Rose took a deep breath, steadying herself.

"Two…"

She reached blindly behind her and the Doctor grabbed her hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

"Three!" he yelled, and, as one, the two of them spun on their heels and shot off down the street as fast as their legs could carry them.

They hurtled down the flooded, rain-spattered streets, leaping over drain pipes, and open manholes like rabbits haring away from the hunters. Neither of them could see more than thirty or forty feet behind them in the murky fog, and the street lamps that would normally have illuminated the cracked concrete and potholed pavement stood dark and imposing in the shadowed streets.

"Any chance you've worked out that plan yet?" Rose asked, hoping that for once he'd come up with something brilliant _before_ they were staring death in the face.

"Not entirely. So far I've got, 'not dying'. Keep running!" he answered, and Rose just sighed.

As they passed another side street, the bright beam of car headlights slashed through the rainy night. Rose suddenly swerved back, and took off in the direction of the car, which appeared to be a taxi, almost wrenching the Doctor's arm out of its socket as they both ran in different directions. He yelped in pain, and Rose winced sympathetically.

"Sorry," she said sincerely, loosening her grip so he could pull back his arm if he needed to, "But I'm trying to save our lives until you come up with a better plan."

With that, she pushed him in front of her and shoved him towards the cab door as the taxi came to a stop near them. The Doctor yanked the door open, and jumped inside, Rose diving in after him a split-second later.

"You two all right?" the kind-faced, slightly balding driver called over his shoulder, peering at them curiously through the rear-view mirror.

"Never mind that, just drive!" Rose shouted, staring out the windows like a panicked predator that has since become the prey.

The driver raised an eyebrow, "Keep your hair on, love. Where d'you want to go, an' have you got the money for it?"

The man was apparently rather confused by the bedraggled pair—and, Rose considered, rightly so—but they didn't have time for questions and stalling. The Angel could be on them at any moment, and Rose didn't think a car door would prove much of a hindrance for it.

Rose pulled out her wallet, and impatiently snatched a large wad of various notes and bills. She dropped the pile of money onto the central console, and pointed up the street, saying, "We're going that way. Money's all yours if you take us there fast."

"Dunno who you are, miss, but that's the best offer I've heard all day." the man said with a huge, gappy grin, happily obliging, and practically flooring the pedal.

Rose leaned back in her seat, letting out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, and looked over at the Doctor. He was rubbing his shoulder with a slightly pained expression.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pull your arm off." she said apologetically.

He shrugged, wincing a little as his shoulder moved, "That's all right. You saw an opportunity and you went for it."

"Does it hurt much?"

"Nah, it's just a little stretched, like… I don't know, extreme yoga or something."

She glanced up at him, raising an eyebrow, but remained silent.

Catching her look he sat up straighter, "What?"

"Nothing, it's just—you're so different sometimes."

"Good different, or bad different?" he inquired curiously.

"It's like you're afraid to talk about anything serious."

"Oh, that's not true! Yoga is very serious."

"There you go again." she sighed, rolling her eyes.

"Rose—"

"Sorry to interrupt, but where exactly am I taking you two?" the cabbie called from up front, peering at them in his mirror.

"Torchwood Tower." Rose answered succinctly, directing her focus entirely towards the driver.

"We can't." the Doctor interjected, "Just keep driving, maybe out towards the countryside, we need to be as far away from people as possible."

Without even looking at him, she asked shortly, "Why?"

"Because we can't risk that thing getting into one of the most dangerous organizations on the planet. We don't need a repeat of the Cybermen incident..." he trailed off.

She turned to glance up at him, feeling a stab of pain at the mention of the Cybermen. He was staring at her, his jaw tight, and his eyes filled with sorrow. As she gazed up at him, he swallowed, and looked away.

"Anyway," he continued, his voice catching slightly, "we need to keep far away from anyone else. This Angel seems to have taken a particular interest in us, judging from the fact it didn't harm any of the other diners, and—presumably—is still following us. Admittedly that's not ideal as far as we're concerned, but it does mean, I hope, that it shouldn't target anyone else as long as they don't get in its way. Which means," he said seriously, "we really need to get it away from the city, there's far too many people that could be at risk."

"You sound like one of them conspiracy nutters. What are you going on about?" the driver demanded, baffled and perplexed by their conversation.

Rose pulled out her Torchwood ID and shoved it in the driver's face, "Right now we're all in a great deal of danger, and this 'nutter' is the only thing between you and a likely gruesome death from a living statue. So. Countryside. Drive."

The driver's eyes widened, first at the credentials, and then at Rose's steady, matter-of-fact demeanor. He swallowed, muttered something that sounded like, "I should've just gone home when I had the chance." and aggressively applied his foot to the accelerator.

"Well…" the Doctor started, sounding impressed and just a little surprised, "that was more volatile than I expected."  
Rose frowned at him, "Yeah, well today isn't my best day. We're being chased by deadly statues and it's only half-past noon. I really don't think this is what Pete intended when he said 'Take the day off'.'"

"Hmm." he acknowledged noncommittally, his gaze taking on a faraway look as he stared thoughtfully out the window.

Rose tilted her head slightly, looking at him curiously, "Doctor, what is it?

"Sorry, what?" he asked, blinking and snapping his gaze from the misted window back to her.

"Your head was about a mile higher than the rest of you."

He gave her a blank look.

"Your head was in the clouds, Doctor, your head was in the clouds." she sighed, "I'm assuming it's something important. So spill."

"It's… this Angel." he said after a moment, rubbing his temples.

Rose felt like saying, "Well of _course_ it's the Angel. What else could it be, the weather?" but she bit her tongue, and waited patiently for the Doctor to explain.

"Normally, a Weeping Angel feeds off of the nearest power source it can find. I can understand it following us, and singling us out, _maybe_ , but not _continuing_ to follow us. For some reason, it's selectively chosen us as its target."

"Why would it do that? Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for a power source."

"It is." he agreed, "Last time I encountered an Angel it was trying to get inside the TARDIS, and consume the energies contained inside the Time Vortex. And they targeted me, specifically, partially for a tasty little snack, but mostly to get the TARDIS key. The thing is, there's no TARDIS this time, so what is it they could possibly need?"

"Doctor, how are we going to stop this thing?"

His face darkened. "I think—"

The car crashed with a sound like a thousand claps of thunder as they were both thrown violently forward, heads slamming into the backs of seats, even as their seatbelts jerked them in the opposite direction.

The colossal shockwave of sound and force rippled through the vehicle, as something heavy and solid in front of it suddenly halted the taxi's prodigious momentum.

The car flipped as the driver swerved, sending its occupants flying every which way, as glass shattered, metal tore, and the cab twisted and spun as it rolled. Mud and gravel flew, and tires shredded as the taxi continued its out of control course, churning up soil and eventually skidding to a stop.

A final roll caused Rose to slam into the side door, her head banging against the window, the cracked pane of glass splintering with the force.

Pain surged through her head, briefly flashing molten red before she blacked out.

* * *

"Rose, Rose, wake up!" a voice shouted somewhere near her. Someone was shaking her shoulders.

She groaned, the pain in her head spiking as blood pounded in her ears.

"Rose!"

She forced her eyes open, and was met with the sight of the Doctor, scratched and bloodied, staring down at her, his face tight with concern.

His expression softened slightly as she started to regain her faculties, and he asked worriedly, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." she answered, blinking a few times to clear her blurred vision.

"Are you _sure_?" he asked, his brow furrowing slightly, as he scrutinized her closely, "You hit your head pretty hard. You might have a concussion."

She frowned up at him, "Well what about you? You look like you lost a fight with a sandpaper factory."

He grimaced, "You don't look much better. I don't think either of us is seriously injured though."

"What happened?"

The Doctor sat up, reaching his head through the window, and peering around for a moment before answering, "I'm not quite sure. But, if I had to guess, I'd say it was our Angel friend."

Something stirred near the front of the vehicle, and Rose's first instinct was to clamber over the seats to get a better look.

The taxi driver was struggling to free himself from the tattered scraps of his seatbelt, but as Rose reached out to help him he shoved her away with a wild look in his eyes.

"Stay away from me!"

Rose stumbled in surprise and fell back towards the seats. The Doctor caught her as she tripped, and helped steady her.

He turned to the driver, angry, but speaking calmly, "There's no point fighting with us, we're not the ones who did this, and you're wasting time."

"Just leave me alone! I dunno who you are, or what you're doing, but I don't want anything to do with you or whatever insanity you're mixed up in!" the man shouted, fumbling with the door handle.

"Don't." the Doctor warned, "The Angel could still be out there. You'd be putting yourself in danger."

The man ignored him, and stumbled out of the car.

The Doctor stared out of the window after him, lightning occasionally illumining the landscape.

"Is he going to make it?" Rose asked anxiously.

"He might. Depends on if the lightning keeps up so we can watch for the Weeping Angel." the Doctor answered, his voice grim, as he peered through the darkness after the driver.

Thunder rumbled overhead threateningly, but no more lightning lit up the sky. The dark silence stretched on, as the seconds ticked slowly away.

"Doctor?"

He shook his head, "I don't know."

A fork of lightning streaked through the clouds, briefly illumining the landscape. At first, Rose thought there was nobody there, but then she spied a small, dark figure on the crest of a hill. Hope surged through her.

"Doctor, he's alive. Look, there!" she said, pointing excitedly.

"Rose." he said quietly.

She looked up at him, and her heart sank in her chest as she saw the grim expression on his face.

"That's not the driver." he continued, not taking his eyes from the figure.

"Rose, go. Go now." he said urgently a moment later, his eyes fixed on the dim silhouette of the statue.

"What's wrong, we can see it, so it can't move, right?"

"Light's going out." he answered ominously.

Rose swallowed "But I thought you said it's more dangerous to be out there?"

"What, should I pull out my Danger-o-meter? Oh, yes, it says we're at 75% risk of death out there, and 83% in here. I don't know how dangerous it is, but I do know we're done for if we just sit here!" he retorted sarcastically, opening the side door and shoving her out, still keeping his eyes fixed upon the Angel.

Rose stumbled as she was thrust out of the taxi, her eyes snapping up to the barely visible figure of the Weeping Angel on the horizon. She turned to help the Doctor out of the car, bits of broken glass clinking and crunching beneath their shoes. He held out his hand as they silently gazed towards the Angel.

Rose took it, and drew a deep breath.

"If we go down, we'll go down fighting, yeah?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Together?"

He smiled, "Yeah. Ready?"

"Ready."

They leapt down the hill, dashing across the muddy terrain, struggling to keep their footing on the slick surface.

Rose stole a glance over her shoulder, frantically scouring the dips and dells for any sign of the Angel. She couldn't be entirely certain, but she thought it was still in the same general area. However, as she continued to squint through the curtain of rain and mist, she realized with a pang of fear that it had moved. It was crouched over the battered, torn remnants of the taxicab, as if looking for them in the wreckage.

Rose shuddered, and put on a spurt of speed, racing down a steep hill. In the dim lighting, it was almost impossible to see anything. Even though it slowed them down, Rose and the Doctor continued to hold hands, and Rose thought that they probably were thinking the same thing; if they drifted too far apart, they might not find each other again before the Angel did. The Doctor was slightly ahead of her, so she could see him sneaking a look over his shoulder every few seconds. Taking a brief moment to look herself, Rose could no longer see the Weeping Angel between the hills and fog obscuring her vision.

"Can you see it?" she asked, having to yell to be heard over the rumbling thunder and the pounding of their feet.

Rather than reply, he simply shook his head, his eyes narrowed, though whether this was from some suspicion he had or the rain beating down on them she couldn't tell.

"Doctor," Rose interjected, as she spied something ahead of them, its top just beginning to peek out from behind a tall hill, "Look, it's—"

"Keep running." he interrupted as she began to slow.

She sped up, but gestured emphatically at the distant structure, shouting over his protest, "Doctor! There's a house up there."

"Oh, right. Well, brilliant. Let's hope someone's home."

He peered back through the misty tendrils of fog snaking their way across the shallow hollows of the valley, and added darkly, "Because I think it finally found us."

"Then let's do what we do best: run, and pretend that's a plan." she said, managing to smile even though she felt more like shaking. She swallowed with difficulty, her mouth dry, as she felt her skin tingle and the hairs on the back of her neck raise the longer she looked away from the Angel. She tugged at the Doctor's sleeve, as they both started to run even faster, and sprinted for the house looming above them.

Their feet pounded furiously across the cracked cobblestone path that led down from the imperious house, their legs a blur of motion as they frantically scrambled up the slick stone steps to the porch. The Doctor tried the door, but it was locked. He banged wildly on the knocker, glancing back behind them agitatedly. Rose scuttled over to a window at eye level, and peered inside, squinting and using her hands to block out any outside light.

"Someone's coming!" she called out excitedly, feeling a flicker of hope flare at the possibility of safety, no matter how fleeting it might prove to be.

A split second later the door was flung open to reveal a chubby woman in her mid-fifties, with hawk-like features, and hair the color of burnished silver, staring up at the Doctor with a steely gaze. She frowned disdainfully at him, her thin lips pressing together and dipping so sharply that they almost seemed to resent the very thought of smiling. She would have been rather charming really, if her features were not twisted by the haughty, imperious expression she displayed.

"Hi, I'm the Doctor and this is Rose. If you wouldn't mind we need to pop inside for a tick. You might want to as well, the weather's dreadful." he blurted quickly with overly exaggerated enthusiasm that only thinly masked the urgency in his tone.

The woman didn't budge. "We are not accepting visitors today." she sniffed, "Moreover, we tend to like to know our visitors before they come knocking so breathlessly at our door."

"Well, we've just introduced ourselves, so now you've met us. And, given the circumstances, I think you can make an exception in visiting hours."

The woman continued to stare stonily at them, barring the door, seemingly unmoved by the Doctor's words.

"Please, this is an emergency!" Rose implored earnestly.

She looked between her and the Doctor for a moment, then noiselessly stepped back to let them pass. They rushed in and the Doctor quickly slammed the creaky old door closed. Rose helped him push the rusty, but trusty deadbolts into their slots, and, for good measure, secured the door chain.

Their hostess looked on as they frantically bolted the door, her expression inscrutable. Once they had finished, she peppered them with a wide repertoire of questions.

"What are you two doing out here in this weather? How did you get out here, did you decide to take a lively stroll in the deluge? Why are you so frightened? It's only rain, so stop gaping out the window as if you've seen a ghost. And for goodness' sake, _why_ , pray tell, are you standing there, dripping on my door mat?"

"Mum, who's at the door? It's pouring out there, who'd be daft enough to go out in this weather?" the slightly irritated Carol Johnson demanded, poking her head around a corner and peering into the entryway.

She froze as she spied the Doctor and Rose, battered and bedraggled, slowly drip-dripping onto the polished wooden floorboards.

"Hello." The Doctor waved.

"Um, hi." she squeaked awkwardly, her voice suddenly sounding quite tiny and high, as she shuffled into the entry hall. "Sorry, I didn't realize—"

"Oh, don't bother," Rose interrupted, "Believe me, I wasn't planning on spending my afternoon like this, but things like this always happen to him." She gestured to the Doctor with a rueful shake of her head.

"That's not true!" he protested, "I was just keeping to myself, sorting out toasters and blinky lights before this. If I'd stayed at Torchwood I'd still be out of trouble."

He paused for a moment, considering.

"Well, actually, one of those buttons did look a bit dodgy... Oh, who am I kidding, my days are always like this. One of those toasters probably would've summoned an armada of wheat warriors or something. Considering you have only the most limited and basic contact with any living creature outside your own planet, you lot make enemies of the most extraordinary variety. I've seen more hostile aliens on Earth in one day than I've met on practically any other planet combined."

"It's Carol, right?" Rose queried, ignoring the Doctor's outburst.

"Yes, miss Tyler." she replied, looking mildly relieved.

"What are you doing here?" Carol asked curiously, "I thought you were taking the day off?"

"It's just Rose." she corrected, before answering, "I was, but a bit of a situation developed, as you can see. Anyway, I thought you were still at Torchwood?"

Carol looked a bit sheepish at that. "Yeah, well, after you left, your dad, um, Mr. Tyler, he, uh, he let a lot of us off for the day too. Said something about not needing full staff on duty for briefings."

"I can see it again." the Doctor interrupted grimly, gazing steadily out of the window without blinking.

"What is it, what's out there?"

"It's a Weeping Angel. And it seems to be focusing on us alone, for some reason." Rose answered quickly.

Carol stiffened. Trust her to know about them. She was always in the archives when she wasn't working.

"Carol, who are these people? Did you invite them?" her mother demanded.

"Mum, don't leave the house. Don't turn off any of the lights. Lock all the doors and windows. Take Elizabeth and go down to the safe room. Where is Elizabeth?"

She sniffed derisively, "I don't know what's got you so worked up, but I am _not_ going down to that _dungeon_. Your sister and I are not going anywhere unless there is a very good reason. Now what is this all about?"

Carol sighed exasperatedly, "I've told you before, but you never believe me! Please, mum, just go down to the shelter, you'll be safe there."

"Carol Olivia Johnson! This is _not_ about the aliens again, is it!?"

"Mum, _please_." she moaned, "Let's not get into this right now."

"Oh no, I'll not have any of your nonsense. Just because you work with those techie geeks at Birchwood—"

"Torchwood, mum. And they're not geeks, they're highly skilled operatives and scientists." Carol interrupted irritably.

"—Does not mean you have a real job, or that I'll start believing in all these aliens you keep spouting about." she continued without even listening to Carol's protests.

"Fine." she said, throwing up her hands in defeat, "Do whatever you want. I'm obviously trying to make your life miserable. Just, for goodness' sake, don't bother us with our work. This is important."

She turned to Rose, completely serious again, and asked, "What can I do to help?"

"I need to borrow your phone." she said, holding out her hand.

Carol paused for a moment, then slid her phone out of her coat pocket, depositing it in Rose's outstretched hand. "Why can't you use yours?"

Rose pulled out her own phone to show her. The screen was completely destroyed, bits of glass still sticking to the shattered frame. Tiny fragments of broken plastic flew free as she gave it a little shake.

"It slammed into the window when the cab crashed." she explained, turning her attention to Carol's phone, and tapping at the keypad furiously.

"Wait, what?" Carol asked, her eyes growing wide, "You crashed a taxi!?"

"Not intentionally." she objected, putting the phone up to her ear, and waiting for the dialing tone to stop, "We think the Angel jumped in front of the cab."

"Who are you calling?" the Doctor called, still not taking his eyes from the misted window.

"My dad. Even if you don't like Torchwood, we need their help right now."

"I'd like them more if they'd stop trying to shoot at every alien that crosses their path." he muttered.

Rose frowned, "You're an alien too, y'know."

"Exactly. And I'm not too keen on being shot at if they change their minds about whether I'm friendly enough or not. Again."

Carol looked between them for a moment before asking in a hushed voice, "Where's the driver?"

"He didn't make it." Rose answered succinctly, her focus on the phone.

As she said this, there was a click at the end of the line and a voice said, "You have reached Pete Tyler, of the Torchwood Institute. I am currently either in a meeting, or otherwise out of contact. Leave your name, number, and message at the beep and I'll respond when I'm available again."

Rose sighed in frustration, stamping her foot impatiently.

At the beep, she said, "Dad, it's me. We're holed up in Carol Johnson's house. There's a Weeping Angel after us. Check the files under that name, or quantum-locked. Keyword searches: living statue, and don't blink. So far it hasn't gotten in, but it's probably just a matter of time. You'll have to contact me with this number. My phone's not working. We need backup, fast. Hopefully you can find something in the archives on how to kill these things."

She paused, and lowered her voice to little more than a whisper, glancing towards the window where the Doctor knelt, staring unwaveringly through the rain-streaked glass, as she murmured uncertainly, "The Doctor seems… almost scared of this thing. And if _he's_ worried about it, I really don't think we want to mess with it. Just, be careful, whatever you do."

She was just about to hang up, when the phone buzzed. When Rose glanced down at it, the screen flashed once and blinked between, "An Error Occurred. Message Could Not Be Sent," and "Signal Lost".

Rose stared at the screen, unmoving, unblinking, her face blank.

"Message Could Not Be Sent" seemed to jump off the screen, taunting her.

Carol was looking at her, her brow furrowed in concern, but Rose barely noticed. She clutched the phone tightly, her fingers turning white from the pressure. She closed her eyes, loosened her grip, and tried to calm down.

 _You lose signal all the time on your phone. It's probably just a fluke. The signal must've been blocked for a second or something. I bet it will work again in a few seconds_. Rose opened her eyes again and tapped the retry button, watching the loading wheel spin 'round, and 'round hypnotically. A few seconds later, it buzzed again, and the messages popped back up. "Signal lost" it flashed mockingly, "Message could not be sent."

Carol reached for the phone, gently coaxing it from Rose's fingers. She scanned the screen and her eyes widened as she read the notifications.

"Doctor," Carol said, her voice quavering, "We've got another slight problem."

He moved nearer, positioning himself just behind Carol and peering over her shoulder at the small display screen in interest.

"Well, that's not good." he muttered, reaching inside his jacket, only to frown and continue irritatedly, "I keep meaning to find a new pair of glasses."

While the Doctor scrutinized the screen with some interest, Carol's attention was on Rose, who still hadn't moved.

After a few tentative moments, she asked, "Rose… are you all right?"

The Doctor glanced up from the phone to look at Rose, and as he did, his brow knitted in concern. "Rose?"

Slowly, not looking at either of them, Rose asked, in a quiet but steady voice, "We're stuck out here, aren't we?"

No one answered.

Looking up slowly, resignedly, she continued, "We're stuck out here, with no weapons, no backup, and no plan, being chased by a creature that can only be stopped if it is seen, and is nearly impervious while doing so. Doctor… how can we possibly stop this thing?"

He didn't answer at once. Instead, he seemed to consider for a heartbeat, and then straightened up.

He tossed Carol her phone and said jauntily, "Right. First things first, we're going to need to do a bit of housecleaning."

"I'm sorry, what?" Carol inquired, caught off guard.

"Housecleaning!" the Doctor repeated with a dogged grin, "We're going to need a few things. Carol. I need to know where all of the doors and windows are in this place. We need to barricade everything. Then, I need every mirror you've got. Every bathroom mirror, every looking glass, every one of those little brush and mirror things that everyone seems to carry in their bags, everything. I've got a plan."


	3. Mirror, Mirror

Fifteen minutes after the Doctor's declaration, Carol, Rose, and the Doctor were creeping along a long, darkened hallway. Carol's mother had not followed them, but had not agreed to go down to the safe room either. Instead, she had huffed off to find Carol's sister, leaving the visibly relieved Carol to lead Rose and the Doctor to the various exits and entryways of the house.

"So what does this plan of yours involve?" Carol whispered, as she carefully lifted a chair from their path, and carried it above her head like a trophy.

"It's more of a plan-in-progress truth be told." he admitted, locking doors as they passed them along the otherwise empty hall.

"Have you ever stopped and considered for a moment that if you'd come up with the entire plan before we go running around almost dying, then we'd probably be done in half the time and not get into trouble like this in the first place?" Rose asked, already knowing the answer before she even opened her mouth.

The Doctor looked almost offended. "We haven't died yet, I think it's working okay." he said accusingly.

"Maybe not, but your plans are basically just a series of crazy choices that boil down to 'we can live four seconds longer if we do this.' "

"Do you want to live four seconds longer or not?"

"If it's my only option. And with your plans it usually is."

"Well there you are then. It does work. Anyway, this time it's a fairly good plan."

"Go on then. What is this brilliant masterplan?"

"Weeping Angels have only one known weakness. They freeze in the sight of any living thing. Even other Angels. Because of this they're also known by another name, the Lonely Assassins. They can never be seen, not even by their own kind, or they will turn to stone and be stuck there for however long it takes for the creature to look away again. This manifests in an interesting way when they're faced with reflective objects, such as mirrors. If a Weeping Angel looks into a mirror, it will be frozen, for all time, or at least until the mirror breaks."

Carol glanced back at him, frowning, "Why is that?"

"Because their bodies can't distinguish between the gaze of other lifeforms and their reflections. Their reflection counts as a living creature, so when they see it, and it sees them, they're stuck. The tricky bit is making sure that they are _looking_ at it. If it's behind them or out of its field of vision it's no good."

"So what, are you going to walk up to it and shove mirrors in front of it then?"

"Have you got a better plan?"

"No, but this seems rather dangerous. Are we just going to leave it in my house?"

"Actually, I thought it would make a lovely lawn decoration."

Carol stopped, her path blocked by tall double doors, and turned to regard the Doctor. "You aren't serious, are you?" she asked uncertainly, a hint of worry in her voice.

"What, you don't want a deadly stone Angel statue sitting in your yard?"

"Uh…"

"He's joking." Rose said quickly, "After we trap the Angel we can have Pete lock it away somewhere. That's what Torchwood is for after all, protecting us from things like this."

Carol pulled open the doors blocking their path, and they were greeted with the sight of the Weeping Angel. Carol jumped, cat-like, into the air, briefly letting out a strangled scream. Startled, Rose made to shove the Doctor out of the way. He stumbled, but kept his footing, his gaze locked on the Angel.

"Go around." he said firmly, "It's fine as long as we keep looking at it."

No one moved. Rose and Carol just stood there, eyeing the statue.

"You need to go around it. We need to find some way to stop it. Look for a mirror."

Carol seemed paralyzed. Rose tentatively took a few steps towards the Angel. Without taking her eyes off it, she took Carol by the arm and pulled her along. She stepped cautiously around the statue, Carol following gingerly behind, her eyes as large as golf balls. Realizing she was going to have to look away from the Angel to search the room, Rose left Carol to stare in wide-eyed terror at the menacing statue.

The room was nearly empty. Off to either side was another door leading to more hallways and rooms beyond. In front of her was a door leading outside of the house. It was standing half-open, the wind and rain blowing through the wide crack, and soaking a rather expensive-looking persian rug.

Rose crossed over to the door and shut it quickly, locking it and looking around once more. Aside from the doors and rug, the only other features of the room were a coat rack and a dusty old chest. She tried opening the locker, but it was bolted shut.

"Doctor, there's nothing in here except more doors and an old trunk."

"What's in the trunk?"

"I don't know. I can't open it." She turned her attention to Carol for a moment, and asked quickly, "Do you know what's in here?"

She shook her head. "I've never opened it. We lost the key to it years ago." she answered in a squeaky voice, her eyes still riveted on the form of the Angel.

"It's times like these that I miss my screwdriver." the Doctor muttered. "We'll just have to trap it in here for now. Rose, the locks to the doors should be facing the outside of the room. You and Carol need to bolt them and work your way back around to this room."

Carol mechanically moved towards the left door, disappearing from view as she closed it behind her. There was an audible snick of the lock sliding into place.

Rose moved to do the same with the right door, but abruptly stopped. "What about you?" she asked suddenly, a hint of worry worming its way into her voice.

"I'll be fine. Carol should be back any minute."

She bit her lip. "But what if she's not, Doctor?"

"She will be. Go on. The longer we wait the more time the Angel has to figure out how to get out of here. I'll shut this door as soon as you close yours."

"Promise?"

"I promise. Now get going!"

Reluctantly, Rose passed out of the room through the side door, and pulled it shut, quickly fastening the locks. She turned and raced down the hall, her eyes flitting across the wall for the nearest turnoff. Corridors branched off to the left and right, but every turn she came across she was met with only locked doors and more empty halls.

With her heart pounding in her chest, Rose sped blindly down the twisting hallways, simply, desperately trying to get back to the hall they had travelled along previously. She reached the end of the corridor, confronted with doors on every side. She tried each of them in turn, rattling the locked door knobs to no avail. The last knob, however, turned easily. For a second, she couldn't believe it, then she excitedly tried to push the door open. It didn't move.

She shoved against the door, but it wouldn't budge. Putting her face up against the door, she peered through the tiny crack between the wall and frame into the room beyond. She fancied she could just see the back of a chair peeking into her limited frame of vision. Rose felt a brief surge of hope course through her, even as she futilely threw her weight against the door. They had barricaded several doors along their main route with chairs, crates, tables, and whatever else they could find, and she was utterly convinced that this was one such door.

Rose stopped, and listened carefully. She thought she'd heard a cracking noise coming from the other side. Curious now, she tested the door again, leaning against it and steadily applying more pressure. There it was again, a creaking, snapping noise of straining timber. Rose took a step back, wincing slightly in anticipation, then threw herself at the door, shoving her entire body against the barricade.

 _Crunch!_ The door flew open in a spray of splintering wood. Rose landed on her side amidst the shattered fragments of the broken chair, the impact knocking the breath out of her. When she tried to clamber back to her feet, she gasped and almost fell back down again.

Her shoulder throbbed painfully where she had struck the door, and several splinters of wood had sliced her arms and hands. She touched her shoulder gingerly. It hurt, but didn't seem too serious.

Rose gritted her teeth and dashed down the hall at a manic pace. She hurtled around a corner, narrowly skirting a full on collision with the wall, and nearly barreled headlong into the Doctor.

As it was, she still bumped into him, and as she did he turned around, for a split second taking his eyes off of the Angel. Just as quickly, he swivelled forward, and locked his gaze onto the statue, but it was too late. Luckily, at the same moment he had turned away from the Angel, Rose had looked towards it. It had moved, but only about a foot or so forwards.

"I've got it." she said quickly, "Why didn't you close the doors?"

"Because I realized I can't do it alone. If I shut the door I'll lose eye contact and it can move around freely."

"We knew it was going to do that though." Rose pointed out.

The Doctor shook his head slightly, careful to keep his eyes trained on the statue. "But what we didn't account for originally is that in the time it would take to lock the deadbolt the Angel could force the door. Even if it couldn't move any farther than that, there's nowhere else near here where we can cut it off from the rest of the house."

"Okay, so what do we do?"

"Look under the door while I lock it. There should be just enough clearance under the door to see through."

Rose slid down to the floorboards, pressing her face as close to the ground as possible, and peered through the tiny slit under the door. She could just barely see the stone feet of the Angel through the sliver of space beneath it.

"I can see the Angel." she said, tilting her head to try and get a better view.

"Great. One second." the Doctor muttered, the sound of the lock grating against its frame punctuating his pause, then said cheerfully, "There we go!"

He offered her a hand, "I was originally going to have Carol help me with this. I'd have thought she'd be back by now."

Rose took it and he helped her up. "She left before me, she should've gotten back ages ago." she said, her brow furrowing, "You don't think there's another Weeping Angel out there, do you?"

The Doctor pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing slightly, "Not sure. Either way though, we'd better go find her. Come on."

They roamed through the halls, moving in the general direction Carol would have followed after locking her door, but could find no trace of her. Most every door was locked, and the places where she could have gone off the main path were becoming fewer and farther between.

"Where could she have gone?" Rose asked, bewildered, as they came face to face with yet another locked door.

"It's a big house. Maybe we passed each other." the Doctor suggested.

"Should we go back and see if she went another way?"

"Might as well." he agreed.

They backtracked through the corridors, glancing left and right down side passages and trying every door again even though they knew everything was locked. Rose absently rubbed at her shoulder, which was still throbbing, and winced as the muscles twinged painfully.

"Did you hurt yourself?" the Doctor asked, looking concerned, as he noticed her pained expression.

"No, I'm fine. Just a little bruised. I had to break through one of the doors we barricaded to get back to you."

"Let me see." he said, holding out his hand.

"I'm fine. Really." she protested.

"Then you won't have an issue with letting me check for myself."

Reluctantly, she held out her arm and let the Doctor examine it. He turned her arm carefully, glancing over it and pausing as he saw the profusion of splinters and small cuts from where the debris had struck her. He flicked his gaze up to meet hers, looking mildly perturbed, then turned his attention to her shoulder, probing the injured muscles gently with his fingers.

She inhaled sharply as an aching pain flooded through her shoulder again.

He paused, scanning her face, then let go of her arm, and said irritatedly, "You should've told me you were hurt."

"And how would that have helped? 'Oh, I'm sorry to disturb you, Doctor, but I got a paper cut. Please take your attention away from the dangerous alien trying to kill us.'" Rose retorted sarcastically.

"Maybe it's not life threatening this time, but what about the next time, hmm? Or the next, or the time after that? I can't help if you don't tell me what's wrong."

"You can talk!" she snorted, "You never say when something's wrong. You'd just keep walking until you collapsed if you had your way."

"I know what's important. If it's not something that can be fixed, I'm not going to burden anyone else with it."

"That's exactly what I did. You can't do anything to help, so I didn't mention it. If you expect me to tell you when something's not right, then you need to do the same."

They glared at each other, neither of them backing down.

 _Crash!_ They turned sharply towards the noise. A second, louder clatter of noise echoed through the halls from the general direction the trapped Weeping Angel lay.

The Doctor and Rose exchanged apprehensive looks, then, as one, they tore down the hall after the sound.

As they hurtled around corners, down corridors, and through doors, the halls were eerily silent. The sound had faded as soon as it had come, and the only noise Rose could now hear was the sound of their own footsteps. They sped up, rounding a corner that dumped them out in the main corridor, and led them past the scattered wreckage of the chair Rose had broken down earlier.

The Doctor slowed and glanced at her as if to say again, "You should've said something."

She did _not_ slow, and impatiently pushed him forward ahead of her.

They sped towards the room in which they'd trapped the Angel but stopped as they heard another crash echoing from the opposite direction. Skidding to a stop, and trading confused glances, they reversed course and sprinted towards the sound. At the end of the corridor they came to a large dining hall, where Carol Johnson stood with her family glowering at her, as she gingerly set down a large, shattered mirror.

"Wonderful. That's another seven years of bad luck. Tell me, do you enjoy breaking things?" Carol's mother asked in a clipped, sardonic voice.

Carol's sister, a tall, thin girl with sharp features, slanting eyebrows, and long ash-brown hair, sniffed derisively at her sibling. "She must've racked up a lifetime worth of bad luck by this point." she said nastily, with a little smirk on her face.

Carol looked absolutely miserable. Between the mirror shards around her, and her family's disparaging snobbery, she seemed overwhelmed. With a little silent sigh she looked up and caught sight of the Doctor and Rose standing and staring back at her in the doorway.

Looking hopeful, and just a little pleading, she carefully stepped over the broken shards of glass strewn about the floor, and slunk over to them.

"Where'd you sneak off to?" the Doctor asked, "We were looking everywhere for you."

Carol seemed to sink several inches deeper into the carpet, squirming slightly.

"I started gathering up some of those mirrors you wanted." she glanced briefly at the broken one she'd set aside, and continued quietly, "I, um, broke a few accidentally."

"You made that noise? We thought the Angel might've escaped." Rose said, laughing a little in relief.

"Sorry." she squeaked, sinking even lower, "I'm such a klutz."

"Why—Why are you melting into the carpet?" the Doctor asked, giving her a bemused look, even as she continued to droop to the floor.

"Carol, relax. We're not mad. Next time though, maybe let us know before you go off somewhere, yeah?" Rose said, smiling at her reassuringly.

"Who are your friends, Carol?" her sister asked, scrutinizing the pair with a critical air.

"I'm the Doctor." the Doctor replied, his face expressionless save for a slight raise of an eyebrow and the faintest ghost of a frown.

"And I'm Rose." she added, not quite liking the almost accusing stares of Carol's mother, and sister.

When neither of them were forthcoming with their own names, she prodded, "And you two would be?"

"Charlotte Maria Johnson." Carol's mother sniffed, "Of the Johnson estate."

"Elizabeth Evelyn Johnson." her sister added a second later, "Of the Johnson estate."

"We guessed." the Doctor said with a hint of sarcasm. "Anyway, if you two wouldn't mind we have some… well, things we need to do. I don't suppose you could help us gather up all your mirrors, could you?"

They looked at him as if he'd just suggested that they all go for a stroll through a pig pen.

"I'll take that as a no, then." he said, turning back to Carol and Rose, and adding cheerily, "Right then! Carol, you lead the way. Rose, sit tight, and keep an eye out for our Angel friend."

"I'm not staying here!" she argued.

"The Johnsons aren't inclined to help us, and they're more at risk staying here than we are. We need someone to look after them."

"Yeah, well, tough. They'll just have to come with us then."

He looked from her to the Johnsons, then back to her again, and shrugged. "All right then. On your head be it."

The Doctor focused on Carol's mother and sister, saying politely, "Pardon me, Charlotte, Elizabeth," he nodded to each of them in turn, continuing, "if you would please follow us, then we can get started."

They glared at him balefully, and Charlotte answered coldly, "We will accompany you only because you are unwanted in our household, and I will not let you out of my sight until you are safely out of my home. I haven't the faintest idea what you and my daughter have been prattling on about, but I know trouble when I see it."

"No, no, actually, Trouble is off on vacation. I just got a postcard from him last week. He's doing quite well for himself."

"Doctor." Rose said warningly, looking pointedly at the red-faced, apoplectic Mrs. Johnson.

"What?" he asked, staring at Rose quizzically.

She smiled tightly, and turned him away from the Johnsons, saying just loud enough for him to hear, "Let's try not to antagonize them. We need their help, remember?"

"I was just trying to lighten the mood."

"Doctor, look at them. Do they look like they appreciate a joke? I mean, they could have brooms taped to their spines and we might never know. So let's try and keep the humor to a minimum, okay?"

He sighed and mumbled an agreement. Glancing over his shoulder at them, he forced a brief smile, his teeth flashing in the soft illumination, before spinning back around to face them. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them excitedly, "Right, well, let's get going then!"

Carol led them through the halls, the other two Johnsons following behind her, looking slightly miffed at the whole situation, while the Doctor and Rose headed up the rear, more to ensure that the Johnsons didn't wander off or straggle behind than anything else.

They stopped every once in a while to look through a room, collecting a rather large and odd assortment of mirrors. Some of them were small, barely larger than Rose's hand, while one or two of them were nearly as tall as the Doctor. Those they had given to Charlotte and Elizabeth to carry, as the two of them had done little else to help thus far. They had been stonily silent about this, but now they were starting to ask questions about the mirrors' purpose, and were becoming more and more difficult to ignore or answer.

Rose had just about had enough of their snide remarks and frankly rather rude behavior, and she had half a mind to just leave them behind.

What'd she care if the Angel got them? They probably deserved it. Good riddance, as far as she was concerned.

Except, she knew that wasn't true. She would care, if only for Carol's sake.

As horrid as they were behaving, they were Carol's family, and Carol at least had been as supportive and helpful as it was possible for anyone to be. So, Rose bit her tongue, took a deep breath, and fought down the impulse to shout at them.

"Trouble?" the Doctor whispered quietly.

"It's like they don't even know how annoying they are." she replied in equally hushed tones, a note of wry amazement coloring her words.

"Well, let's see if I can distract them then." he said confidentially, before raising his voice and asking, "Does anyone have any other reflective objects lying around? Anything will do. Phones, stainless steel, bits of tin foil, anything?"

"We could try the kitchen." Carol suggested, "We might be able to use some of the pots."

"Oh, yes, terrifying. Frying pans to defend us from statues. Do you three have any idea how ridiculous you sound?" Elizabeth demanded, folding her arms, and glaring at them.

"Liz—can I call you Liz?" the Doctor began.

"No, you may not." Elizabeth huffed.

"Great. Liz, do you have a cat?"

Her eyes flickered with annoyance, but she replied civilly enough, "No. We do not keep pets."

"Well, imagine a cat then. It's like when they're in hunting mode and you're staring at them. As long as you look at them they don't move much, but if you turn your back for even one second they'll pounce."

"I haven't seen a cat do that before." Charlotte commented trenchantly.

"Really?" the Doctor said, distractedly, "Well, I don't know about cats, but there are these cat-like creatures on Orlega Prime that do that. Mind you, they are purple, and they have got beaks, but aside from that they're practically the same."

They pushed through a set of double doors and piled into the kitchen.

You probably could've fit a small army in there, Rose thought.

The floor was black and white tile like in one of those old-fashioned bistros, and there was a large, wood-burning stove that took up most of one wall. Stone pillars were staggered throughout the room, looking a little strange against the checkered floor, but matching the rough-textured walls and ceiling. The whole room looked a little like something they might've found in Wonderland, or the TARDIS, Rose mused, a small smile softening her expression.

"Stick together. Grab anything you can see your face in. Don't wander off." the Doctor said forcefully, as his eyes darted around the room, silently appraising each shadow.

Carol, and Rose set to work immediately, rummaging through the cabinets, and setting aside various pot lids and saucepans. Charlotte simply stood in the doorway, holding the rather large mirror she'd been given earlier, and watching with little interest as her daughter and strange coworker foraged madly through the kitchen. However, Elizabeth went a step further than simply standing around. She propped her own mirror against the wall, and marched to the other end of the room.

"Liz, I said don't wander off." the Doctor called sharply.

She turned back to him and rolled her eyes pointedly, "Yes, and you also said we're being chased by living statues. How exactly does a statue move?"

"They're not statues, exactly. Like I said, they're creatures from another world. They only turn to stone when someone looks at them." the Doctor explained, following her progress with his eyes, as she opened side doors and peered out.

Elizabeth affected a horrified expression, clutching at her heart dramatically. "Well why didn't you say so!? We must get out of here at once! And by all means, let us stop to collect mirrors and frying pans along the way." she said, her voice rising to match her melodramatic reaction, before dropping back to her disdainful, condescending tone by the last sentence.

The Doctor turned to Rose, demanding in exasperation, "Why? Why is it that whenever I try to help you lot, there's always someone who won't listen?"

Rose was about to answer him, when there was a loud bang from the other side of the room. Everyone turned to look, only to discover that Elizabeth was gone. The door she had just opened seconds before seemed to be the source of the commotion. It slammed shut, as if someone had thrown it open so hard that it bounced back off the wall and closed itself again. The Doctor was instantly serious again.

"Nobody move." he said quietly, the two short words riddled with warning, the air heavy with the unspoken thoughts of everyone in the room. Everyone except Charlotte, it seemed. She ignored him, and strode purposefully to the door.

"It doesn't take much to frighten you lot." she remarked, crossing to the other side of the room before anyone even had time to protest, "She just went through the door." She reached out and turned the doorknob, to a chorus of "No!"es. She pulled open the door, staring into the hall for a few seconds before looking back at them over her shoulder.

"Nothing there. She probably just went—" But they would never know how that sentence would've ended. For at that moment, Carol's mother simply vanished.

Rose rushed towards the half-open door on impulse, moving to help if she could.

She realized that there was nothing she could do after a few short steps, her gaze glued to the space Carol's mother had been but scant moments before, but she still stepped purposefully towards the not-quite-closed door, trying to establish eye-contact with their assailant. The Doctor, however, blocked her path, reaching out and grabbing her by her uninjured shoulder.

She looked at him sharply, and he quickly dropped his hand, but did not step out of her way.

"Rose, keep still. Everyone just stay calm, and stay where you are." he said urgently, his eyes fixed upon the door and the sliver of hall beyond.

They waited, staring unblinkingly at the door, floorboards creaking in the heavy silence as they shifted anxiously. Nothing happened. At least, not at first. Rose squinted, her brow furrowing slightly as she silently wondered for a moment if it had always been this dark. She glanced up at the solitary light above her head, its already dim illumination flickering slightly as she watched.

"Doctor." she called out, transfixed by the tiny quivering light, willing it to cling on to whatever metaphorical life a lightbulb could have.

She saw him instinctively start to turn, but he caught himself at the last second. Instead, he contented himself with asking, "What's wrong?"

"The light is going out. D'you think it's the storm or something? she asked, but with a sinking feeling, she somehow knew it wasn't going to be something as simple as that.

"Doubt it." he muttered. "I suspect that the Angel is toying with us." he said, creeping towards the door. At that precise moment, the light went out.

"Doctor!" Rose shouted, stumbling forward in the sudden darkness.

Barely a second later, a flash of bright light briefly illuminated the room. It was so blindingly bright that Rose had to shut her eyes. She couldn't even get a glimpse of the area around her, the light as difficult to see through as the darkness had been a moment ago.

Blinded, utterly certain she was about to have her first, and last, up-close encounter with their attacker, Rose decided she wasn't going to die sitting down. So, she kept moving.

To her surprise, she ran into something, hard. By itself, this probably wouldn't have surprised her, she figured she'd probably hit a wall anyway, but what she hit did not feel solid enough to be a wall, or the Angel.

There was a surprised grunt from whatever she'd slammed into, and they crashed to the floor.

The painfully bright light faded, and was replaced by a more tolerable level of illumination. It took a few seconds, but Rose's eyes eventually adapted to the light level. She blinked several times, spots dancing across her vision, as the room slowly swam back into focus. Just in time for her to see what she'd landed on, which, as it turns out, was the Doctor.

She felt a wave of relief wash over her at seeing him alive and quite obviously not snatched by the Angel.

She glanced over her shoulder to see the Weeping Angel, which had stopped only a few feet away from where they had fallen. Carol was standing just in front of it, holding what appeared to be some kind of torch with the standard Torchwood logo emblazoned on the front, and propping up one of the tall bathroom mirrors the Johnsons had left stacked against the wall.

The Doctor wriggled slightly, bringing Rose's attention back to him. It only took her a few seconds to realize that he couldn't move, and she hastily climbed to her feet, her cheeks coloring slightly as she mumbled an apology.

The Doctor seemed amused, and, as he regained his own footing, he smiled at her, though she wasn't exactly sure why.

"Is this what you do instead of hugs now? You knock people over? That's the second time today, Rose Tyler." he said teasingly.

She slapped him.

The Doctor yelped, and his shocked and genuinely wounded expression would've been funny if she wasn't so angry with him.

"What was that for?" he whined, putting a hand to his face protectively, as if he expected her to hit him again. She certainly considered it, but managed to restrain the impulse.

"When I call your name, I expect some sort of response. The lights cut out, there's an Angel right outside the door, I call your name and I don't even get a peep out of you! For all I knew the Angel could've gotten you!"

"Well, that's what you'd want anyway, isn't it?" he snapped.

She gaped at him, momentarily stunned into silence.

"Don't be ridiculous." she said stiffly, not looking at him, "We all need to stick together to get out of this."

He didn't say anything.

Curious, she risked a quick glance up at him, and found that he was staring back down at her. His eyes were sad, forlorn, and his expression was one of such abject misery and dejection that, despite her discomfort and unfamiliarity with this new Doctor, Rose couldn't help instinctively reaching out to grab his hand.

He stiffened at the contact, his features slipping back into the inscrutable mask he usually wore, but he didn't pull away. He seemed more surprised at the touch than anything else. Tentatively, he entwined his fingers with hers. She let him.

He may not be her Doctor, but if he thought that she wouldn't care if the Angel got him… well, she just wondered what _else_ was going through his head. And that look on his face…

"Rose," Carol called, her voice calm and oddly measured, interrupting her thoughts, "there's another Weeping Angel in here."

Rose spun around, instantly alert, to see that there were indeed two stone Angel statues now in the room with them. Carol was already setting up the second mirror in front of the new arrival.

"I thought there was only one of them." Rose remarked, glancing back at the Doctor.

"There was. It must have some friends around." he said, dashing to the open door and peering out.

"There's two more down here." he announced, quickly closing the door, and locking it. Not that it would hold them long, but still, every second they could get helped. "Right, we can't stay here. It's too exposed, and we're being closed in. So, where can we go?"

"Didn't you say you had some kind of a safe room or something?" Rose inquired, directing the question to Carol.

Carol nodded, snatching up several of the smaller mirrors, and gathering up the pots and pan lids.

"It's the strongest and most secure area of the house. It's in the basement. The stairs are a couple halls away." she paused for a split second, before adding, "There's only one way in. If we go down there, we'll be trapped in until Torchwood can clear the area, or we eliminate the Angels ourselves."

"We'll have to risk it." the Doctor said, clearly not relishing the prospect. "Rose, have you heard anything from Pete?"

She was already dialing him before Carol stopped talking. Rose shook her head, as she heard the automated voicemail message start playing again.

"Nothing." she said, frustrated, even as she immediately started calling again. She knew it wouldn't make any difference, but it helped relieve some of her pent-up anxiety, and the Doctor seemed to realize this too, as he simply nodded in understanding and turned his attention back to Carol.

He gestured to the door, "Miss Johnson, would you lead the way to this pigeonhole? Mm, pigeonhole. Interesting word. Pigeonhole, pigeonhole. Pigeonhole. Pigeonhole." he said, rolling the syllables around.

Thunder rumbled through the walls, and the Doctor snapped back into action, ushering Carol through the door, and snatching at a frying pan that threatened to topple from the precarious stack already in her arms.

The Doctor spun on his heel to face Rose, seeming slightly surprised that she hadn't moved.

"Rose, we need to go." he urged impatiently, eyeing the locked door critically as it shook on its hinges.

"You go." she said, "I'll stay here for a minute, give you a head start."

"Not a chance. You should go, I have a better chance in here than you do."

"And why is that, Doctor?" Rose asked coolly, a slight challenge in her voice.

"Superior eye control. I can keep my eyes open for an hour without blinking if I have to." he replied, adding, "I may be part-human now, but that's one ability I haven't lost."

"Liar." Rose said without even turning around, her voice sharp and brittle as she expanded, "You might've fooled Carol with that, if it'd been her here instead of me, but I know that trick. That's your I'm-lying-because-you're-in-danger-and-this-is-the-only-way-you'll-leave voice. And I should know it, you've certainly used it enough times."

She paused, taking a deep breath and trying to rein her voice back to a less accusing level, before continuing, "If you think I'm going to leave you here on your own, then you've got another thing coming."

"Well we can't both stay." the Doctor said irritably, though his tone was significantly subdued after Rose's words, "Carol is the only one who knows where we're going, and I doubt we'll just stumble upon it in this place. Especially not while we're being pursued by Weeping Angels."

"Fine. Either you go, and I'll stay, or we both go together, because I am not leaving you here all alone." she snapped stubbornly.

The Doctor screwed up his face and stared at the closed door indecisively for a moment. He sighed, and gave a tiny rueful shake of his head towards the door, before turning and pulling Rose out of the kitchens, slamming the door behind them, and racing down the hall after Carol.


	4. Rabbit Trails

Carol was nowhere to be seen. How she had managed to give them the slip while carrying so many clunky, _loud_ pans, mirrors, and kitchen utensils Rose had no idea. _She_ certainly couldn't have managed it.

So, with the somewhat ominous sound of creaking timbers echoing around them from who knows where, the Doctor and Rose blindly rushed through the corridors. As they rounded the umpteenth corner, they slammed into something tall, unmoving, and made of stone.

Rose desperately tried to keep eye contact with the thing, even as she and the Doctor both toppled backwards from the force of the impact. As they went down, there was another crash from further along the corridor followed by an absolutely deafening smashing and clattering that made both of them clap their hands over their ears.

Unable to hear, and unable to look around for fear of being caught, Rose and the Doctor kept their eyes trained solely upon the Weeping Angel as they dazedly tried to recover from the abrupt collision and unbearably loud noise that had followed quickly on its heels.

The Angel's arms were held loosely, close to its body, its hands grasping and claw-like. Its body was frozen in a half turn towards the Doctor, its attention clearly having been on something further along the hall before the two of them had run into it. Its face was uncovered for once, Rose noted curiously. Its teeth were bared and its features were locked in a startled snarl.

The Angel was completely out in the open, which seemed rather odd if it had been trying to surprise them. It wasn't even facing the right way, Rose noticed, immediately deciding that it seemed rather unlikely that this particular Angel had been trying to ambush them. If she had to hazard a guess, Rose was betting that it had been after Carol instead.

Ears still ringing, Rose nudged the Doctor, nodded at the Angel, and said loudly, "Got any mirrors?"

"What?" he asked, his voice sounding muffled and almost unintelligible.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could just see his brow furrow in confusion. She could barely hear him, and, evidently, he couldn't hear her either. Instead, she just pointed to the Angel again.

Not bothering with a response, the Doctor considered the Angel for the briefest of moments, and slid the semi-reflective pan he still carried into one of its hands. He studied his work, readjusting the pan slightly in the Angel's grasp, until it was staring directly at its own reflection in the metal.

Satisfied, he turned his attention to further down the hall. She followed his lead, curious as to what could have caused such a commotion, and whether Carol was all right.

Pots and pans were strewn across the dark mahogany flooring. It looked like a bomb had gone off, leaving only cooking vessels in its wake.

In the midst of the mess was Carol, sprawled across the floor, flat on her face. They hurried over to her, calling her name and shaking her lightly.

She groaned, and flopped over, staring up at them with a slightly dazed look on her face. Rose helped her to her feet, while the Doctor started to pick up all the pots, pans, mirrors, and various things she had dropped. Miraculously only one of the mirrors had broken from the fall, the rest saved by a combination of luck, and the assistance of a thickly padded rug.

As soon as Carol was on her feet, she wobbled slightly, taking a second to regain her balance. Rose helped support her, wondering what on earth had happened.

When she was able to stand on her own again, Rose voiced the question, speaking more loudly than she usually would have because of the faint, still present, ringing in her ears, "Carol, what happened to you?"

Carol didn't look at her, and Rose thought that maybe the poor girl's hearing was more shot than her own.

She was about to repeat the question, when Carol suddenly looked down at her right shoe, blushing heavily, and answered almost too quietly for Rose to hear, "I tripped on my shoelace."

"Come again?" Rose asked, tilting her head forward slightly.

"I—Hold on, what happened back there?" she asked abruptly, pointing back towards the Angel. "Is it _admiring_ itself?" Carol demanded incredulously.

"Yes, _or_ ," the Doctor said, drawing out the vowels, "It could be making us a spot of tea."

He paused, looking between them. "Nothing?" he asked, sounding slightly disappointed.

Carol seemed confused as to whether he was joking or not, and Rose just shook her head with a long-suffering, impatient expression.

"Doctor," she said exasperatedly, "We don't have time for this. If you could keep your jokes to yourself until we're out of danger that'd be great."

His smile faded, and an expression she couldn't quite identify flitted across his features. It was gone a split-second later, replaced by a somber, serious expression, and he nodded.

"Right, of course, sorry." he shifted his load slightly to direct his attention towards Carol.

"Lead the way." he said simply, nodding down the hall. Sparing only a fleeting glance back at the Weeping Angel, still stonily staring into the reflective face of the frying pan, Rose followed behind the Doctor as Carol led them through the house.

It was in the middle of another similar corridor several tense minutes away that Carol motioned for them to stop. Rose looked around expectantly, but the hall was conspicuously devoid of doors. The Doctor quirked an eyebrow at Carol, who ducked down and pulled back a corner of the rug. Hidden beneath the carpet was… a stretch of bare floorboards.

"Is that it?" the Doctor asked, seeming rather put out.

"Doctor, I work for Torchwood. I may not be the best agent they have, but I'd like to think that my safe room meets our own security standards." she replied with a small smile.

She placed her hand in the middle of a marginally wider board, pressing her palm flat against the floor, and waited. A blue light blinked on the surface of the plank, then faded. A second later it returned, and traced around Carol's hand, flashing several times, before disappearing entirely. As they vanished, a cylindrical hole about four feet in diameter opened in the previously solid flooring.

"Biometric hand scanner." Rose explained as the Doctor's gaze flitted between the invisible scanner and the hole that had suddenly appeared in the floor, "It matches fingerprints, electrical skin response, hand position, and DNA to a specific profile in the registry. Our tech boys had a lot of fun with these."

He knelt and traced a finger over the interface, which did not react to his touch in the slightest.

"I assume I'm not in the registry?" he said, the sentence more of a statement than a question, before pushing back up to his feet and asking, "What did they use to disguise the scanner? Alien technology, I assume?"

"You're not in _this_ registry." Rose said, not elaborating on the topic, but instead answering his other question, "There's no alien tech in this one, it's purely Torchwood ingenuity. It uses micro-pressure circuitry embedded just below the surface of the material to detect handprints. It works a bit like a touchscreen. At least," she added, noticing he was staring at her with an almost imperceptible frown tugging at one corner of his mouth, "that's how the tech guys explained it."

Carol started taking things from the Doctor, filling up one arm with a staggering pile of pots and handheld mirrors, and began climbing down into the dark hole via a set of steel rungs along one wall of the sudden drop-off. A sound of tinkling, broken glass followed quickly after.

Carol growled in frustration.

In response to the Doctor and Rose's immediate inquiries, she sighed and clarified, "I just dropped another of the mirrors."

In a quieter voice she added, "Maybe my mom was right, I think I have built up a lifetime of bad luck."

The Doctor was instantly at the edge of the hole, lying flat against the wooden floor and peering over the edge at Carol, who was perched on the ladder about halfway down the wall. "Carol, I'm sorry about what happened to your family. Really, honestly, I am so sorry, but you can't let what they said cause you to make a mistake that could cost you your life, or ours. You need to focus. There will be time later to mourn them."

Rose joined him at the edge, and said, "Besides, you're not bad luck. You were the one who decided to help us. You were the one who knew where all the mirrors and things were. _And_ , you were the one who saved us from that Weeping Angel in the kitchen. We would never have made it this far without you, Carol."

Carol swallowed thickly, grateful tears glimmering in her eyes. They didn't linger. Carol blinked back the tears, and nodded before continuing her descent in silence, perhaps because she feared she would say too much, or possibly because she couldn't trust her voice not to crack. Either way, she quickly reached the bottom and motioned for them to follow suit.

The Doctor perched on the edge.

"Do we close the hatch behind us?" he inquired, turning to Rose before asking, "Does it operate on an automatic scanner or a button of some sort?"

Though he had asked Rose, it was Carol that answered his question, "Neither, but I can close it from down here."

Satisfied, the Doctor quickly scuttled down the ladder, his speed and dexterity almost spider-like, and Rose idly wondered if he had ever seen Spider-Man. He grinned up at her, and she immediately brushed her thoughts aside, reminding herself that it wasn't important. She needed to stay focused, and right now vague musings about the Doctor—who was _not_ the Doctor—would only get in the way.

Ignoring his friendly smile, Rose clambered down the long ladder and instead focused her attention upon Carol, a habit that was becoming more and more frequent as the day went on.

Once both the Doctor and Rose were safely off the rungs, Carol snapped her fingers, and the virtually invisible hatch sealed itself again, blending seamlessly with the rest of the ceiling.

The room was plunged into darkness. It did not last long however, as a second later, after fumbling around a bit, Rose produced a small torch from inside one of her jacket pockets and flicked the switch on.

The immediate area around the trio glowed with the light of the torch, revealing thousands of tiny dust particles floating through the air between them.

"Rose came up with that one," Carol said, nodding up at the now nearly invisible hatch above them, "The entrance itself has a five minute timer on it, but if you're inside the safe room you can just snap your fingers to open or close the hatch. Pretty neat, don't you think?"

"She didn't happen to say anything about where she got this brilliant idea?" the Doctor asked, directing the question to Carol, but glancing over at Rose with something that might've been… Was he smirking at her?

Carol nodded, "Yeah, she did actually, now that you mention it. She said she knew a bloke named Adam that opened and closed a door just by snapping."

"Mmm." he hummed, " _Well_ , she did. Only that 'door' as you put it was a hole in his head. Honestly, if I hadn't seen the evidence with my own eyes, I'd have sworn he didn't have a brain."

He was only teasing, and at Adam's cost, but she still felt a little defensive. After all, they both knew that she was the only reason Adam came along in the first place. Rose felt herself blush in embarrassment at the memory of Adam.

He hadn't just put them in danger for his own personal gain. He'd been incredibly stupid the entire time while doing it. He'd put a great big hole in his head, he'd tried to alter history, and, after the Doctor had saved the day once again, he'd tried to blame _him_ for his own boneheaded decisions. What had she ever seen in him?

She looked back at the Doctor now, so similar and yet so different from the man she had struggled for two years to find, and from the gruff goofball in a leather jacket that she'd first agreed to travel with. When it came down to it, what had she seen in _him_ that had made her stay?

They stared at each other for a long, wordless minute, and it was the Doctor that looked away first.

"Rose, this has to stop." he said, rubbing at his eyes agitatedly, skimming a hand over his face and through his hair.

There was a note of pleading in his voice, she thought, and this time, it was Rose that couldn't meet his gaze.

"What has to stop, Doctor?"

"You. Me. This. Whatever _this_ is." He gestured between them. "You're distant. You won't look at me, you'll _barely_ talk to me, you don't want to be anywhere near me—"

"That's not true." she protested.

"Really?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow, "Then why aren't you looking at me now?"

She wasn't. And she hadn't even noticed.

In the past 24 hours, avoiding him had become something like a second nature, because she didn't know how to handle this. How to handle _him_. She had just enough focus left to realize that that was disturbing.

With an effort, she turned her eyes back to his, and noted a sad little gleam of resignation there, because her reaction had proved what he had already known.

No, that wasn't fair, she thought. He'd been avoiding her gaze as much as she'd been avoiding his.

Rose snapped, "Well, what about you? Every time I look at _you_ , you look away. You just swallow and go on doing that stoic Time Lord 'I'm always okay' thing, and launch into a speed documentary on some random subject."

"Only because you do that, right there. You argue. You lash out. So I do the one thing I'm still good at: I run my gob off." he retorted, his voice bitter.

Silence fell between them.

Rose didn't know how to respond, because, she realized, he was right, and she had no idea how to fix it.

The Doctor slumped, the anger draining out of him, replaced by a kind of weary acceptance.

"It's okay, Rose," he said quietly, and the utter listlessness in his voice sent a shiver down her spine, "I'm… I thought I could show you that I was the Doctor— _am_ the Doctor—but I guess I was wrong. You saw me when I first regenerated, and it took a bit, but you saw _me_ , even without that leather jacket and those big ears. But now, when I'm around you, I don't feel like the Doctor. I feel like…"

He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair in silence. A range of emotions crossed his face, contorting his features; they fought for prominence as he struggled to voice his thoughts.

"You were right." the Doctor finally admitted.

"What was I right about?" Rose asked, concerned at how quiet and resigned his voice was now.

"I'm not the Doctor. Not the Doctor you knew. I'm not even a proper Time Lord anymore. I'm the Doctor that destroyed the Daleks—the Doctor that committed genocide to save millions. I'm the Doctor that's too dangerous to be left on his own, the Doctor that my other self rejected. I'm not the 'proper Doctor,' I'm his shadow. I have exactly the same memories, feelings, and experiences as the other me, and I knew that I would never willingly kill all of the Daleks, even though they endangered the universe. That's why I had to do it _for_ me. You said before that I was avoiding serious subjects... _this_ is why."

Silence hung in the air for several long seconds, before Rose finally whispered, "I want to believe you're the same. I do."

"I know." he said sadly, jamming his hands in his pockets and stalking over to one of the darkened corners, ostensibly to check for anything lurking in the shadows.

Rose bit her lip, watching him as he continued his pacing under the flimsy pretense of searching the room. She thought about saying something, but held back.

They'd just argue again.

Instead, she turned to Carol, who had been staring fixedly at her phone and animatedly poking buttons during the conversation.

"Did you try calling Torchwood?" Rose asked, more to break the silence than anything else.

"Yes, Miss Tyler—Sorry, Rose." she corrected herself. "The reception down here is practically nonexistent, and I can't seem to get through to the Director."

"Oh." Rose frowned as she realized that they could be stuck down here for a very long time if Pete couldn't get them out.

"I did manage to get through once though,." Carol added quickly, seeing Rose's face fall.

"Did he say anything? Is he sending a team down? Does he have a containment module for this?"

Carol shifted uncomfortably. "Um, well, it went to voicemail again. I tried to get ahold of somebody else, but, well, you know, Torchwood doesn't really have a permanent number, and most people I could contact are out today..."

Rose smiled at Carol, and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "I know. We'll just have to wait it out. You're doing really well, Carol."

Carol returned her smile weakly, punching more numbers into the phone.

There was an odd thumping noise coming from the corner the Doctor was in. It sounded a bit like an out of control drummer, and Rose turned to see what was causing the irritating sound.

The Doctor had ceased his nervous pacing and was now rhythmically tapping the floor with his Converse-clad foot.

When he suddenly dropped to the ground and put an ear to the floor, Rose dared to ask, "Doctor? What is it?"

With his ear still pressed firmly to the ground, the Doctor knocked several times against the cold, hard floor. It was only when he finally pushed back up to his knees, regarding the floor intensely, that he finally spoke.

"It sounds a bit… hollow. Have you got any other rooms beneath here?" he asked, turning to Carol.

She shook her head. "No. This is the only one."

"Hmm. See, now that is strange, because it is definitely a bit hollow. The ground's solid enough, there aren't any other rooms, and I can't imagine you have _that_ many rabbits. So what's causing it?"

He rushed to the closest wall and pressed his ear to it as well. He rapped against the wall as before and, also as before, he pulled back with a confused expression.

"It's over here too. Carol, check that wall, will you?" he asked, gesturing to the opposite side of the room.

She quickly replicated his action, and shook her head a moment later.

"There's nothing over here, Doctor." she said after checking the other two as well.

He absentmindedly ran his fingers through the fringe of his hair as he contemplated the bare walls with a growing mixture of confusion and interest.

"If I had to _guess_ , I'd think there's another room through here."

He tapped the wall, peering at it intently as if it would reveal its secrets if he stared hard enough.

"No, there can't be." Carol said, "There aren't any other rooms down here, Doctor."

"Well, we'll find out in a minute." he replied, testing his weight against the wall. "Er, right. Bit of help here? Won't take a second."

Carol and Rose crossed the room, careful to avoid the stacked mirrors, various saucepans, and other things they'd left on the floor. Together, the three of them shoved at the wall, straining against it for a second, before the wall gave way beneath them with a colossal _crash_ of cracking and tumbling plaster and stone.

Coughing, choking out lime dust that hung thickly in the air, settling from the ruined walls, each of the three slowly regained their feet. The Doctor was the first to rise, to nobody's surprise, and the next second he was hauling Rose to her feet and babbling on faster than she could at first understand.

"—does this happen? Oh, brilliant this is! Great big, old-fashioned house and what do you have? Great big, old-fashioned catacombs."

"But we don't have any catacombs." Carol protested weakly as the Doctor helped her to her feet as well.

"House this old? Probably just blocked up the entrance, and quick as you like, you've got a secret vault and no one to remember it. I love secret vaults. Never know what you'll find in these things. A king, a time portal, a minotaur, last week's newspaper, fountain of youth?"

He ducked down into the passage, disappearing behind a bend in the corridor.

"Doctor, you can't just go wandering off." Rose called.

There was no response.

Unbidden, an image of the Weeping Angels floated to the surface of her thoughts, and she shuddered, feeling the cold fingers of uncertainty crawling up her spine.

She spun to face Carol, saying hastily, "Stay here and cover the entrance."

She quickly picked her way over the detritus and chunks of plaster, crossing the corridor and coming to the corner where the Doctor had vanished. The eerie silence persisted. A silence tense as a bowstring, taut with anxious expectation and wordless, prickling unease.

Pace quickening, heart pounding, her feet flying now over the uneven terrain, Rose rounded the corner. Only to find the hall ahead completely empty. She breathed a quick sigh of relief at not finding herself face to face with one of the Angels. The relief melted away, however, as swiftly as it came, as she understood that, while there was no Angel, there was also no Doctor.

Her sinking, hesitant uncertainty growing once more, Rose crept through the tunnel, gaze alighting on even the smallest flicker of the shadows. It was darker here. The torchlight from the entrance didn't stretch this far, not around the corner, and certainly not down the corridor. Rose fumbled in her pockets for her phone, then belatedly remembered it had been smashed earlier. Carol had taken hers back as well to try to get through to Torchwood. Rose hadn't even thought to bring so much as a match with her.

She could turn back, and she was about to, when she heard a pebble clatter to the floor from somewhere within the darkness.

She froze.

Rose listened intently, but no other sound issued from the inky depths. What should she do? She could try and get back to the entrance, but she doubted she could make it that far if a Weeping Angel lurked in the gloom. Standing here did no good either. Briefly, for just a second, Rose thought she caught just the faintest flicker of a light from within the deepest layer of shadow.

Tentatively, she stepped towards it. She could see nothing else around her. If there was an Angel here, she'd be an easy a target no matter where she was standing. At least moving towards that light, however briefly, however faintly it gleamed, she might stand a better chance. She told herself this, though she knew that, in the end, all would be for naught. Light or no, the Angel would get her. It could wait for eternity. It would just have to bide its time.

 _No_ , she was not going to go that easily. If the Angel wanted her, it was going to have to fight for her, because if there was one thing the Doctor had taught her it was that you never, _ever_ give up, even if it seems hopeless. _Especially_ if it seems hopeless.

She tightened her jaw, eyes flashing defiantly in the impenetrable blackness. Her conviction renewed, Rose raced forward, determination and adrenaline bolstering her steps.

The light glowed, always ever farther along the tunnel's walls. Rose doggedly chased after it, steadily gaining on the tiny glimmer of hope in the endless dark. The tunnels went on and on. She couldn't be certain, but the subtle variations between her footfalls as she swept through the corridors made her think that there were many side tunnels, all branching off from each other.

The light drifted down two of these, and she found that a few of them at least seemed to twist and interconnect further within their depths, tangled together in a massive underground knot. The light was a little nearer now, and, desperate and hopeful at once, Rose broke into a flat out run, the tunnel resounding with the sounds of her footfalls as she closed the distance between them.

As she neared the light, two things became readily apparent to her.

One was that the light she had been following was a small pen light.

The second is that the holder of this pen light was none other than the Doctor.

There was a third thing that came to her only as she was nearly beside him, and that was that the tunnel, which had previously been little wide enough to fit two people walking side by side had expanded and stretched upward and outward as it went along. The halls were now nearly double their original size, the faintly glistening, semi-smooth stone walls branching into two paths before the Doctor and unfurling out into the darkness.

"Doctor, you can't just wander off. There could be anything down here." Rose panted, slightly breathless, as she reached him.

The Doctor looked up and raised an eyebrow.

"'You can't just wander off.'" he parroted back. "Really, Rose, now where have I heard that before… 900 years of space and time travel and there's only one thing I've learned. _Nobody_ listens when _I_ say that. Seems a poor time to break tradition now."

Before she could argue or think of a sufficiently sarcastic response, the Doctor turned to the right hand branch of the fork and started down it.

"Besides, it's better to lose one person than three." he said, almost to himself. Rose followed after him, again wondering briefly where this unexpectedly blunt, fatalistic streak was coming from.

"It's even better not to lose anyone." she rebutted, keeping pace with his long, purposeful strides, "And the best way to ensure that is to stick together, Doctor. Getting yourself killed isn't going to help anyone."

He flicked his gaze sideways to meet hers, breaking the contact a moment later without comment.

"Where's Carol?" he finally asked.

"I told her to stay behind to cover the entrance."

He nodded. "We should check back then. There's something…" he trailed off.

Rose was instantly alert again. "Angels?" she asked, giving the exposed walls a brief once over, still not relaxing even though everything seemed normal.

He paused, considering, then shook his head. "I don't think so. It doesn't feel the same. This is something different."

Rose didn't like the sound of that. The Doctor had always had something to go on, even if it was only a tenuous thread of reasoning or a wild guess. Composure, even excitement, in the face of the new and unknown was his natural state, and to have him so on edge and uncertain was disconcerting.

Quickening her pace, Rose took point, recognizing patterns in the tunnels and guiding the two of them back to the entrance. The Doctor was quiet for the rest of the trip. When Rose occasionally glanced back at him to make sure he was keeping pace he seemed lost in thought, his brow furrowed, and his gaze slightly glassy.

The trip back to the tunnel's' entrance took several tense minutes. As they reached the opening to the safe room, everything was dark and quiet. The stone had mostly settled, and a thick layer of dust lay over the scene.

"Carol?" Rose called, cautiously poking her head into the room.

It was exactly as they'd left it, mirrors and saucepans stacked haphazardly near the center, the trapdoor still firmly locked above the metal rungs of the ladder, but there was no sign of Carol.

"Where could she have gone?" she asked, looking around in bewilderment. The Doctor was investigating the rubble that had previously been the fourth wall of the room, and seemed puzzled as well.

He knelt down, and picked something up from amidst the rubble. "It's Carol's phone."

"No note?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Nope."

He stood up, tossing the phone to Rose. She caught it and briefly glanced over it, but, as the Doctor had said, there was neither note nor indication of where she might have gone.

"Does the trapdoor have some sort of usage log?" he inquired, moving to inspect the stacks of reflective materials.

"It does." Rose answered, crossing to the ladder and placing her hand against a small, slightly inset panel.

Like the hidden scanner in the floorboards above them, the panel glowed a faint electric blue and pulsed once, going dark for a moment before replacing the digital imprint of Rose's hand with a miniaturized glowing key screen and tiny index log. She navigated to the most recent entries, but found that the only index was from when they had first entered the room.

"There's nothing here. If she got out, it wasn't through the trapdoor." Rose said, moving back towards the entrance, where the Doctor was now peering out and into the tunnels.

"Are you sure she didn't come with you?" he asked, shining his tiny penlight into the murky passage.

"She wasn't with me, Doctor."

He took a deep breath, and opened his mouth to say something. Then, he stopped. A peculiar expression crossed his face, and he sniffed the air intently, like a hound catching a scent.

"Doctor?"

He didn't respond, instead taking another whiff of the air, and wrinkling his nose slightly. Stooping down, he brushed his fingers over the uneven ground, dust caking on his fingertips. Standing again, he touched the tip of his tongue to his index finger and considered for a moment.

" _Doctor?_ "

"Hmm?" he acknowledged distractedly, brushing his hands against his shirt, and peering down the opposite tunnel from the one they had walked along.

"What did you find?" she asked, reining in the mild disgust and impatience bubbling beneath the surface.

He shook his head. "I don't know. It's not definite, it's more like a feeling. Instinct. Right down in my bones, something… Time Lord. And something else there too. I just can't figure out what it is."

"But Carol's down there too, yeah?" Rose asked, already knowing the answer.

"Probably." he agreed, the gleam of curiosity visibly spreading across his face.

His eyes glinted in the thin light, eager interest slowly beginning to melt through his wary unease.

Rose sighed, looking between the tunnel and safe room quickly, wishing they had an extra torch to use.

"Well, no use standing around here. Let's get going."

The Doctor frowned slightly. "You'd be safer if you stayed here. I can find Carol by myself."

"Carol is my responsibility. She's a Torchwood operative. Besides, we only have one light, and the safe room's compromised at this point."

"I have better night vision than you do. I can leave you the torch and still get along fine without it."

"Oh no you don't. If Carol's lost her torch and she's in trouble you can't guide the both of you out of there in the dark. And splitting up is what caused this mess in the first place. No, I'm coming with you."

He looked like he was about to argue again. Rose crossed her arms and glared at him. "We're not debating this. I'm coming with you. I've had enough of being left behind. You have no idea what could be down there, and Carol is _my_ responsibility. I _am_ coming with you."

"Fine, but you take the torch in case we get separated somehow."

"Deal."

With these arrangements made, they started down the tunnel, the Doctor in front, and Rose following a step behind with the penlight.

They walked on and on, only turning when the main tunnel twisted. They saw and heard nothing of either Carol or the strange something that the Doctor could still not identify.

The walls here were slicker than they were near the safe room, and the occasional slow drip-drip of water splashing from the ceiling to the ground broke through the silence. Faint rumblings of thunder from the storm that still raged overhead echoed through the halls. By this time the catacombs must have passed out from underneath the house, and they were now travelling beneath the large hills that dotted the area surrounding the Johnson's estate, judging by the subtle changes in their surroundings.

Rose briefly wondered just how far these tunnels went. They had seen fewer connecting corridors as they travelled farther from their starting point, but now the branches and forks seemed to be increasing again. Abruptly, the tunnel opened up, the walls flaring out on either side, and the ceiling sloping gradually upward before them. The chamber, empty, and large, was dotted along its perimeter with other tunnels connecting with the natural cavern, glowing softly with a warm yellow light.

As Rose scanned the area, she could see nothing that resembled traditional lighting, and the pale light seemed to come from everywhere at once, emanating from the walls.

"Oh…" the Doctor breathed, staring around in rapt fascination. "That's not supposed to be here."

"Bioluminescent algae?" she queried, inspecting the nearest of the glowing walls, as the Doctor crossed to the center of the chamber.

He looked at her with some surprise. "Since when did you become an expert in things like bioluminescent algae?"

"Torchwood training. There weren't any Time Lords here to keep the balance. We had to get smarter to keep up with everything. So, is it bioluminescent algae?"

"Not quite. No Earth algae is this clever."

"Clever? Doctor, it's a plant."

"Actually, it's a protist."

"Still doesn't explain why it's so clever."

"Look at it, Rose. Just look at it!"

"I am looking, Doctor. And…?"

"It's golden."

"Doctor, if you keep spouting nonsense I'm just going to stop asking."

"No, really. What algae is gold? Bioluminescent Earth algae is blue, maybe green depending on the climate and location, but still, it's a fairly high frequency of light. Blue penetrates your oceans more, and it's easier to see in the regions where the sun doesn't reach. Blue makes sense to Earth algae, it's the safe and ordinary status quo. Gold algae? That's not normal. You just don't see it. So, what possible purpose is there for gold algae if not for the organism itself?"

"To benefit something else, I suppose."

"Precisely." he beamed.

"I don't understand."

"Simple. Your Torchwood scanners, they light up. It doesn't benefit the scanner, so why bother?"

"To let us know it's working, and help us see them more clearly. I don't see what that has to do with..." she trailed off, comprehension dawning.

The Doctor nodded approvingly, urging her to continue.

"You're saying that someone purposefully put it here? For light?"

"Yep." he said, stretching out the 'p' as he was wont to do.

He grinned, and went on, "Blue's all well and good for algae, but there are a fair number of species out there that live on planets orbiting yellow or orange stars like this one, and those would be predisposed towards golden light over greens or blues. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me to find that the algae on that planet like yellow more too."

He took a breath, letting his words have time to be understood before continuing, "You still haven't touched on what makes these little organisms so clever though."

Rose looked around, eventually shaking her head, completely at a loss. It all looked normal enough, or as normal as a gold-glowing cavern could she supposed.

"The tunnels," he said, gesturing to the way in which they had entered, "they're completely clean of this stuff. This algae is _only_ in this chamber. So the question is, what, precisely, _is_ the point of having highly localized, bioluminescent algae?"

"If you were hiding from something or someone you wouldn't want it to grow everywhere." Rose pointed out.

He looked at her with a mixture of surprise and approval. "I hadn't thought of that. Interesting point. Question is, what's down here, hmm? What's hiding?"

Rose eyed the tunnel entrances with an aimless unease, though there was, as usual, nothing there. Any Weeping Angels in the mansion must have been as oblivious to the catacombs as she, the Doctor, and Carol had been.

With a huff of exaggerated resignation, the Doctor said, "Well, best to get it over with, whatever it is. Allons-y!"

They moved cautiously deeper into the chamber, the soft illumination of the walls rendering their torch rather pointless. Not wanting to drain the battery any more than necessary in case they needed it later, she switched the light off, and they continued.

As they walked, the cavern began to narrow gradually again. Just when Rose thought they couldn't go any farther, she spied a smallish gap in the rock face to the right, no more than two feet in diameter. The Doctor spotted it too, and it didn't take him more than a few seconds to start wriggling through it.

Rose followed after him, freeing one of his shoelaces that had snagged on an edge as she climbed through. He helped pull her through the rest of the way and then busied himself retying his rebel shoelace.

And, so, it was Rose that saw it first.


	5. Time Lord Party Tricks

**A/N** : Tiny bit shorter of a chapter this time. Sorry about that. The last one left off at kind of an awkward spot, and honestly this one does too, but figuring out where and how to split these has been beyond troublesome. The story itself should make up for it though, I hope!

* * *

Twenty, maybe thirty, short feet away, stood a tall, green alien that looked something like a fruit fly crossed with a human. Its appearance was largely insectoid, with large, bulbous black eyes, and an armored carapace reminiscent of an ant. It stood upright on two legs, and its hard, angular features were contorted in what Rose could only assume was surprise. It held a projectile weapon, at a split-second guess, which was, Rose realized, pointed directly at them.

More than that, she couldn't tell; She took this all in in a matter of seconds. In the next two, she scanned the immediate area for anything they could use as cover. Unfortunately, short of climbing back through the hole they'd come through, there were no other rock outcroppings anywhere in this subchamber, and Rose thought it highly unlikely that they could make it back in time.

The Doctor had his back to the alien, and was still busy tying his shoelaces. Even so, he noticed her tense beside him, and stood up, turning around to face the alien. If it surprised him, he gave no outward sign. His gaze flitted between the alien and its weapon, finally focusing on the alien, earnest curiosity flickering across his features as he did so.

"Easy there, green guy. We just want to talk. Look, I'm unarmed. I just want to know what's going on." he said, his voice calm and friendly. He held his hands out to show they were empty.

The viridian, vaguely insectoid alien lowered its weapon slightly and the Doctor slowly put his hands down again.

He smiled and took a step towards the creature, "Right, now we can get down to business—"

Alarmed at the sudden movement, the alien jerked its gun back at the Doctor and fired.

Time seemed to slow down in the room to a tenth of its natural speed.

Rose watched, horrified, but unable to move quickly enough to do anything, as the creature raised its weapon and fired. As the strange alien weapon discharged, Rose, far too slowly, threw a shock-shell at the alien, knowing it would be too late.

The deadly projectile—some sort of slug wreathed in plasma, its glowing, cherry red edges flickering with light—fired from the gun. It arced through the intervening space in painfully slow motion as it inched towards the Doctor. Even as Rose threw her own missile at the alien creature, her eyes were fixed upon the Doctor, the muzzle of the alien weapon flashing, its projectile flying inexorably on towards him, still too fast for her to see even with the warped progression of time.

Then, time sped up again.

The Doctor was utterly motionless as the projectile made contact, impacting with his left shoulder, inches from his heart. He stumbled for a moment, surprised, and fell to the ground as his knees buckled beneath him.

A bright flash of electricity arcing across the form of the alien followed a split-second later as Rose's shock-shell hit home, and the creature curled up against the wall, temporarily incapacitated.

"Doctor!" she shouted, rushing to him, barely sparing a second to make sure the alien was no longer a threat, at least for the moment.

The Doctor was lying on the ground, with a hand clapped to his wound, his face pale, as he tried to lift his head.

"Doctor, hey, look, it's okay. It's all right, you're okay." she said hurriedly, trying to reassure him as much as herself.

He groaned and tried once more to lift his head.

Rose quickly slid her hand under his head, while gently pushing him back down with the other, "Sit still, Doctor. Don't strain yourself." Her eyes drifted to his wound. He had covered the shot with his hand, but through his fingers, Rose could see a crimson stain spreading quickly across the dark blue fabric of his suit.

He smiled at her, his face tight with pain, as he saw her horrified expression, "Don't worry, it looks worse than it actually is."

He was lying, she knew. Lying to lighten the mood. Lying to make her smile. Lying, to mask the seriousness of the situation. Once, Rose might've smiled back, but now she couldn't bring herself to.

"You can't die here." she choked.

"Rose, it's all right—" he began.

"No. No, it's not. Hang on, Doctor, just let me call someone, call an ambulance. You're going to be fine." she protested, pulling out Carol's phone, even though she knew there was no way anyone could get to them all the way down here.

"Rose, no." he moaned, reaching out and covering her phone and hand with his free left one, "Not the hospital."

She wavered, her eyes flitting between the Doctor and the phone, "Why not?"

"I'm part human, but I'm still a Time Lord." he gasped, "I can't let anyone have access to so much as a fingerprint. Do you have any idea how many people would tear this world apart for Time Lord DNA? Think of what could happen if your governments had that kind of information."

She bit her lip, "I could call Torchwood. We've got an emergency response team for this sort of thing."

He looked at her, "Of all the people in the world, Torchwood are the ones I'd be most scared of having it. Besides, you haven't been able to get through all day. They're not going to answer now just because you want them to."

"Then, Doctor, _tell me_ , what do I do?"

"Nothing." he said, wincing with pain, "There's nothing you can do. But that's all right." he shut his eyes for a moment, "That's fine."

"How?" Rose demanded, tears stinging her eyes, "How is this fine, Doctor? You've been shot, and you won't let me call anyone, and I can't do a single thing to help you!"

"Rose, calm down—"

"Calm down!?" she stared at him in disbelief, "I spent two years trying to get back to you. I jumped through countless timelines, parallel worlds, alternate Earths, and not a single one of them had _you_. Not... still alive, anyway. When I finally _did_ get back to the right universe you _got shot_ , but you pulled through, sort of, and you saved the day. Just like you always do. After all of that though, as if everything that had already happened wasn't enough, you brought me right back to where I started. On _that_ beach of all places. And now, just as I thought that maybe, just maybe things were going to be at least somewhat normal, you went and got shot again! It can't end like this. Not now, not here, it's not fair."

He frowned, and reached up, wiping the tears from her face, leaving traces of red in their wake.

"Who said this is the end? I've got loads of places I still want to see, and things I want to do."

"You—You've got a plan?" Rose asked hopefully.

"Of course I've got a plan, but you're going to have to trust me, and do exactly what I say. Can you do that?"

She nodded mutely.

"Good. First things first, I need you to help me get the bullet out."

"What!?"

"Now," he gasped, "Remember what I said: you're going to have to trust me."

"Doctor, I can't. You've already lost a lot of blood, pulling the bullet out will just make it worse."

"I know. But it needs to come out for what happens next."

"What happens next?"

"You'll see."

"Doctor, why won't you just tell me?" she implored, "What is going to happen?"

"Because, Rose, I don't know if this is going to work." he said honestly, looking her right in the eye, "Now—are you going to help me, or not?"

She bit her lip, "I'll help, just… show me what to do."

He reached into one of his pockets and handed her a small pair of tweezers, "Here, these will help."

Rose took them and swallowed hard, "Now what do I do?"

"Well, basically, you're just poking around for the bullet. Should've left a hole or maybe a handy trail you can follow." he said with the faintest ghost of a smile.

"Doctor, this isn't funny. You're dying." she said seriously, as she carefully searched for the projectile.

"Yeah, 'course I am, but I'd rather die laughing than live without a sense of humor." he responded, wincing as she prodded the damaged skin and muscle. "Have you found it?"

She nodded, "Yes. D'you want me to… to count down or something?"

He shook his head faintly, "Just do it."

Rose reached down and grabbed his hand, holding it comfortingly. He squeezed hers briefly, firmly, telling her to just get it over with.

She took a deep breath, held it for a second, then, with a quick tug, tore the bullet loose.

The Doctor bit back a strangled cry of pain, clenching his teeth, and gripping Rose's hand tightly. She held on, even though the pressure was painful, and waited for it to subside.

Blood was flowing fast and freely from his wound now, the bullet being the only thing that had kept most of it at bay. Without it, there was nothing to impede the flow, and his blood began to drip from the already saturated fabric of his suit and pool in a slowly spreading puddle across the floor.

Finally, the Doctor groaned, "Rose, you need to move back."

"No, I'm staying right here." she argued fiercely.

"Rose. Please."

"Only if you tell me why."

"Please." he choked.

Finally, Rose acquiesced to his pleading, unsteadily climbing to her feet, and took a few steps back. Not very far away, as he had wanted, but as far as she could bring herself to.

"If I'm right about this, and I really hope I am, it should be starting right about… now." he gasped.

Nothing seemed to happen for several moments.

Then, just for an instant, there was a prickle of energy on the air, quietly insistent, creeping, rippling through the room.

The air around the Doctor shimmered slightly, like waves of heat on a summer day. The faint oscillations of energy steadily grew, and the awful, bloody wound started to glow with a pale gold light. The light exploded outwards, shining ever brighter, wending its way upwards, the golden shocks of brilliant energy branching out, skimming over the crimson flow. The blood began to glow faintly as well wherever the light touched, the incongruous display shining like fire on water.

It dipped, gently swirling, and stretching out to cover and suffuse the bullet wound entirely with its brilliance. The light blazed, burning from bright to blinding, the air surging with energy, pulsing with the shockwave of a barely contained explosion breaking silently forth, when, suddenly, it vanished, feathering out with the sound of dissipating power, like the static of dead radio waves.

Several long, hesitant seconds passed.

The Doctor lay motionless on the ground, not stirring save for the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

Rose tentatively stepped forward, moving in a daze towards him. She knelt down, and was surprised to see not only were all traces of his injuries completely healed, but the pool of his blood was gone as well. The only sign that anything had happened at all was the small hole in his suit, and a very faint stain of red lingering against the blue fabric.

"You're still you." Rose said, a slight quaver in her voice, as she looked down at him.

He felt the tiniest of smiles tug at the corners of his mouth. "I'm still me."

They'd said this twice before, once when he'd first regenerated and had been desperate to make her understand, and the second time when he hadn't changed but she'd still needed reassurance that he was who he always had been.

She was uncharacteristically silent, and he wondered how she was feeling in this moment. Was she angry? Confused? Happy? He hoped that if she couldn't tell him, that she would at least give him some sign to let him know that she was all right or how she was taking this, but instead, she pulled back.

The Doctor went still, and felt his erratic, singular heart sink in his chest. He watched her anxiously, but she didn't move. She just stared at him, her expression unreadable, even to him. He closed his eyes, feeling numb, trying to swallow the bitter taste of dejection crawling up his throat.

 _I'm still me_ , the words flashed through his mind, but now they sounded far more like a plea, a justification, than a statement, and he wondered if he was trying to silently convince her, or himself.

 _I'm still me. I'm still me. I'm still me._ The words swirled around him, playing over and over again in his mind, when, without warning, he felt himself being pulled up, arms wrapping around him in a sudden desperate hug.

The Doctor's eyes flew open, shocked. He sat there, his surprise leaving him frozen and uncomprehending. It took him several seconds before he realized that he was indeed being _hugged_ by Rose Tyler, and another second more for him to reciprocate the gesture.

She buried her head in his shoulder, clinging to him, and he felt the wave of icy worry give way as a surge of warm relief washed through him. He released a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding, and his shoulders, tight with pain and surprise both, relaxed.

"I thought I'd lost you. Again." she mumbled, her words muffled against his suit.

He felt a small smile creep across his face. "Not that easy to get rid of."

She didn't say anything, just buried her face deeper in his shoulder. Neither of them spoke for a while, just clung to each other and quietly processed.

Finally, Rose pulled back and looked at him. "What happened, Doctor?"

"First fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle. Barely. Had just enough energy left over to patch myself back up."

"Like your first Christmas. You're just full of surprises these days." she said, smiling a little though it was badly strained.

"Why couldn't you just tell me what was happening?"

He didn't quite meet her eyes as he answered, "I wasn't sure it would work. Another couple of minutes and it might not have."

He flexed his fingers, and wiggled his toes.

"Hmm, everything seems to be working. I wasn't quite sure I still had enough energy left to do that. Regeneration is a bit of a dodgy process, it's always slightly different. And meta-crises definitely throw a wrench in the gearworks."

"What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "Regeneration isn't an exact science. Sometimes it can take a little less or a little longer than fifteen hours to get rid of all the excess regeneration energy. On top of that, most of that little extra reserve energy was used up during my counterpart's regeneration. I've been running on fumes, and there was a very real risk that it wouldn't work."

The Doctor frowned slightly at this, then continued in a lighter tone as much for her benefit as his own, "Luckily, I was right, and that wasn't the case."

"You're going to run out of luck eventually." Rose said, worrying her bottom lip as she looked at him.

"Well then, good thing I invested in the luck market not too long ago, isn't it? Well, not on this planet, obviously, but the point still stands. Sort of. Anyway, that's why I'm not alone."

"Speaking of not alone." Rose said, eyeing the as yet unconscious alien.

"Ah, yes, our trigger-happy friend." The Doctor moved towards the prone figure cautiously. Apparently, near death experiences could damp his enthusiasm for mysterious aliens that just appear out of nowhere, temporarily at least.

He reached into his jacket, but pulled back, irritation crossing his features.

"No specs in this coat." he muttered, turning his attention to the curious alien.

"What is it?" Rose asked, watching over his shoulder.

"Not sure." he admitted, lifting its eyelid to inspect its enormous eyes. "I've never seen this species before."

"Then why are you wearing your thinking face?"

"My—Sorry, what?" He looked up, a bemused expression replacing the one he had been wearing.

"Your thinking face. Whenever you're trying to figure something out you kind of scrunch up your forehead, narrow your eyes a bit, and you get this far off look like the answer's hiding just past what you can see."

"Everyone does that." he said dismissively.

"Not like you do." she smiled. Properly this time, he was pleased to note.

"Now come on, if you haven't seen these aliens before, why are you wearing your thinking face?"

"Because I know them from… somewhere. I haven't the faintest idea where they're from, who they are, or what this one is doing here. But," he continued, raising an eyebrow at the alien, nonplussed, "It's something recent. Something I've seen… today…" His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, and he jolted to his feet. "Oh! Oh, that's brilliant! You've seen them too. Of course, I should've realized sooner!"

"What? Realized what sooner, Doctor?" Rose asked, alarmed by this sudden change.

"Back at Torchwood. 'Species 159-7' Pete said. Did you ever read that report he had?"

"No, it didn't seem that important at the time. Why, what did it say?"

"'Species 159-7, an insectoid-type species wandering through the solar system very near Earth.' This is one of the same aliens Torchwood has been tracking for the past week!"

"But what does this have to do with the Weeping Angels?"

He shook his head. "No idea. We'll have to ask him if we can get him to wake up."

Struck by a sudden thought, she looked around quickly and asked, "Do you think he's alone?"

"Probably not. Most species prefer to travel with others to stave off loneliness." He shut his mouth, seeming to realize what he'd said.

After all the constant stress, Rose felt the corners of her mouth twist up teasingly, a playful response already forming.

The Doctor leveled a reproachful finger at her. "Don't you dare say a word about my travelling habits."

She settled for a smug grin. "Fine. Why don't I hold his gun and keep an eye out for any unwanted guests, and you can nudge him awake?"

It took a minute to revive the alien. When it finally came around, its large eyes snapped open and it immediately tried to back away from them. Finding itself with its back against the wall, it made a low, anxious chittering sound with its stubby mandibles, and stared at them unblinkingly with its wide, dry eyes.

"Doctor, I just realized, we're not going to be able to understand it, are we?"

"Depends on what language he speaks." he said, leaning forward slightly and tilting his head as he looked at the alien, "It's all right. We're not going to hurt you."

The alien let out a warbling noise that shook the air slightly and simultaneously made a sharp series of short clicks with its mouth.

To Rose's surprise, the Doctor responded with several clicks of his own, and gestured between the two of them as he communicated with the alien.

"How on Earth did you do that?" she asked, amazed.

"He speaks a basic language that seems similar enough to two or three in the other universe. It wasn't that hard to figure out."

The alien continued to chitter and snap at the Doctor.

"What's he saying?"

"He's wondering what we're doing here." the Doctor murmured, clicking back and forth with the alien without explanation for a while.

She tensed as the alien started to reach out, but the Doctor reassured her with a wave of his hand, and the alien stretched out a chitinous, three-fingered hand to touch the small hole in the Doctor's jacket where he'd been shot.

The alien trilled quietly, and it sounded almost… regretful.

The Doctor frowned a second later, and Rose, unsure what they were talking about now, asked, "What's wrong?"

"Not sure how to explain regeneration in this language. The closest thing they have is metamorphosis."

"Like a butterfly?"

"Basically, yeah."

"Okay." Rose found herself saying, imagining the Doctor as a very animated orange butterfly.

The alien and the Doctor continued to click and chirp at each other for several long, uninterrupted minutes. The Doctor paused every once in a while, then seemed to ask a clarifying question before continuing the conversation.

Minutes later, the Doctor leaned back, rubbing his neck agitatedly and finally explained, "Apparently, our friend here was part of a cargo ship with four others of his species when they picked up a signal while they were coming through the solar system that matched their own technological frequencies. They went off course to investigate and wound up here."

"What kind of cargo?" she asked curiously.

He grimaced, "Apparently, they were transporting a basilisk."

"A basilisk?" Rose queried, a chill running down her spine. "King of serpents, Harry Potter-type snake thing that can kill you if you look at it, yeah?"

"The very same." he said grimly.

"Well," he amended almost immediately, "not _exactly_ the same, but the basic concept's the same."

"Great. So now we've got things that'll kill us if we _don't_ look at them, and a creature that'll kill us if we _do_ look at it. Today's been a lark, let me tell you. How do the Weeping Angels factor in, though?"

"Well, that's just the thing. When they got here, they found the pieces of tech down in these tunnels. Except, what they found were the exact same scanners and tools they'd brought with them, down to the serial codes. This wasn't just their _species'_ technology, this was _their_ technology."

She shook her head, "How is that even possible?"

"They found more than just their technology down here." the Doctor said quietly.

"The Weeping Angels." she breathed, the pieces clicking into place.

He nodded quickly, "Yes, exactly. The Weeping Angels ran across them in the catacombs, and with a single touch they were sent back nearly one hundred years into the past."

"How does that work out?"

The Doctor scratched his chin for a second, thinking, then smoothed out the loose, cracking dirt of the floor.

"Here, it's like this." he explained, drawing a long horizontal line in the dust and placing a short vertical mark at the left end of it. "This is the aliens when they're in space."

"This," he said, drawing another line beside the first, "is when the aliens go to Earth and find their technology."

He drew another line, "This is where they get zapped back into the past."

He moved much further down the makeshift timeline before drawing the next line, "They spend years in the past, most of them dying off before reaching the present. This leaves their technology scattered about down here for themselves to find when they come to Earth." He connected the first and last lines with a looping curve.

He looked up from his diagram and his expression fell slightly as he met her gaze.

"You… you figured that out already, didn't you?" he asked, chagrined.

She laughed, his disappointment almost comical. Her laughter did nothing to alleviate his frustration. In fact, unsurprisingly, it made it worse.

"I've done enough time-travelling to figure out bootstrap paradoxes, Doctor." she said in a gentler tone, still smiling a little teasingly, "Still, it's one of the worst paradoxes I've seen."

"You are joking, right? That's a bit rich coming from you."

"What? It's a pretty prickly little paradox, isn't it?"

"Really? Worse than _Bad_ _Wolf_?"

"I said it was _one_ of the worst paradoxes."

"You're a walking paradox." he muttered.

"Come again?"

"Nothing. Moving on! If you weren't talking about the timeline, what were you asking about?"

"How does this basilisk thing fit into the big picture? Seems a bit of a coincidence for those aliens to just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Don't know, maybe it's…" his eyes went wide, and he immediately made another set of sharp clicks with his tongue, his entire focus riveted on the alien. It clacked back slowly, hesitating slightly and taking longer to respond than before.

Rose watched with growing concern as the alien's fingers started to twitch, its clicks growing quieter, sloppier. "What's happening to him?"

"Oh, no, no, no. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." he said, looking from the alien up to her, his expression pained, "He's dying."

"Is he hurt? Can we help him?" Rose asked, kneeling down beside him.

The Doctor shook his head. "There's nothing we can do."

"Why not? What's wrong with him?"

"His species lives for about ninety years."

"But, I thought you said… you said he's been here for a hundred years…" she stopped, realizing with a pang the full implication behind the words.

Watching the alien struggle to control his twitching fingers, she felt a rush of pity for him and found herself reaching out to hold one of the alien's hands, in spite of her previous wariness. She didn't even know if he could see them anymore, his eyes appearing glassy and listless in the faint illumination, so she just squeezed his hand reassuringly and looked on helplessly.

The alien's confusion and jumpiness now seemed to make sense, and she felt a rush of empathy for the creature, despite the harm he had done.

The Doctor was silent, his expression studiedly blank, his eyes, staring into the alien's own, looking older and sadder than she'd seen since he'd got here.

The alien gurgled, managing to chitter something out with visible effort, reaching out his other hand to clutch wildly at the Doctor's shoulder.

The Doctor leaned in, making a low cooing sound that seemed to comfort the alien somehow.

They stared at each other for some time, until, finally, his breathing stopped. His fingers tightened around Rose's for a second, and then his grip went slack. That subtle light of life behind his eyes dimmed, flickered out, and he was gone.

The Doctor removed the hand from his shoulder and laid it by the alien's side, closing his still-open eyes so he looked as if he were merely sleeping.

The silence seemed to stretch from one second to the next.

When the Doctor finally spoke, his voice was low, raw with bristling, barely restrained emotion, "He was old, dying. His life stolen from him. The last to go. Abandoned. He was alone, and he was scared."

Not knowing what to say, but knowing how he felt, Rose just put an arm around him comfortingly, and sat with him in the renewed silence.

"He was just a kid when he got here, his first ever assignment." the Doctor said flatly, his tone cooler now, but still holding a hint of that brittle edge, "They thought it would just be a routine transport mission."

Hating to bring it up, but knowing it was important to focus on what they could do next, Rose asked, "Did you find out how the Weeping Angels and the basilisk are related?"

Luckily, he seemed to tolerate the question well enough, seemingly more interested in focusing on the future than continuing to brood, and answered in a calm voice, "The Weeping Angels are dying out. This dimension only has a few dozen running about at most. They're hoping to use the basilisk to create another one."

That icy chill that had nothing to do with the damp room ran down her spine once more. Not at the words, no, though those were worrisome enough. No, it was his tone of voice, the hint of fear threaded through it. It had her mentally running through her stock of stun-grenades, furtively checking the entrance to the little alcove to ensure it was clear, combing through her Torchwood field training. In short, it had her on edge and on the defensive.

"What do you mean, 'create another one?' How would that even work?" Rose asked, struggling to tamp down the unease she felt.

"It wouldn't. Well, not the way they're hoping at any rate." he said, rather unhelpfully not explaining further.

She just waited a moment and gave him time to explain it, knowing he'd get to it eventually. She didn't have to wait long.

"The Weeping Angels," the Doctor continued after a few seconds, "Were originally Time Lords. It was a sort of punishment in the old days. It was the highest form of punishment, actually, short of actually killing anyone. Nobody except the High Council ever really knew the details behind it, but there were rumors, obviously. A Time Lord that was convicted of treason, betrayal, whatever you want to term it, could suffer this fate. According to the rumors, the Time Lord would be bound before a large reflective pool and the basilisk would be positioned behind the victim. The eyes of a basilisk are normally deadly, but when viewed through a reflection, their gaze instead turns the viewer into stone."

He shuddered, a flicker of some unidentifiable emotion crossing his face as he continued, "For most species, petrification is instantaneous. For Time Lords, the process takes years. Over time, the time energy that flows through their veins dries up as they petrify, and they're forced to feed on the potential energy of others. Something about the basilisk's gaze reacts with the time energy within Time Lords, it triggers a quantum-locked state, so in the sight of any living thing, they turn back to stone. Weeping Angels cover their faces so they can't accidentally look at one another and trigger this state, but some of the rumors said they do it for another reason, because what they see in those eyes is beyond their comprehension. They say it drives them half mad, and that their fear of the basilisk is so great that they physically shield their gazes so they never have to look it in the eye again. When the Time Lords died, the basilisks and the Weeping Angels, they all should've died with them. But they lived on, the basilisks dwindling slowly throughout the aeons, and the Weeping Angels essentially immortal. When the Time War ended, some of them must have slipped through the cracks between realities and wound up here."

"So… what, they want to turn _you_ into a garden gnome?" she asked, her tone planetary masses lighter than she felt.

"Looks like it." he said in agreement, "I always sort of liked garden gnomes. Very human tradition, sticking an ugly little stone bloke in your garden to help it grow better. Still, I don't particularly fancy quitting my day job, now that I have one. As it is, I'm not sure it would work anyway."

"Meaning?"

"Well," he said, shrugging, "I'm only mostly Time Lord now, there's no telling what would happen if they tried the same thing on me. I might go sauntering off as a mobile lawn decoration, or I might not. Could be stuck there forever like a Roman statue, and I don't particularly care to relive that experience either, so, for now, the plan would simply be to avoid any basilisks."

"We need to find Carol." Rose reminded him. "Once we do that, we can work on finding our way out of here and contacting Torchwood. If those aliens were here for a hundred years, and none of the Johnsons noticed them, then they must've stayed in the catacombs this entire time. Maybe they have another way out of here."

"Good idea. Let's keep moving. If you're right, it's possible the Weeping Angels could be in the catacombs right now, and we've stayed still for too long."

They both climbed to their feet, taking turns crawling back through the tiny aperture to the hallways proper.

As they left the central chamber and the glowing algae, they flicked back on the torch and penlight, their eyes adjusting to the narrower beams of light as they stepped as quickly as they quietly dared through the silent tunnels, with nothing but the rain hammering on the ceiling above to disrupt the eerie stillness all around them.

They saw nothing. They heard nothing.

In fact, there was no sign of danger at all, which is why, when Rose was grabbed from behind by a strong pair of stone arms, she could do nothing, but freeze.


	6. A Very Potter Problem

**A/N** : The chapter's finally done. Took forever, but it's done! Bit of a longer one, which I suppose rounds out the shorter one from last time. I was really inspired by all the lovely reviews. =) I'm not sure how many more chapters there will be after this, but probably at least two to close it off properly. Hope y'all will enjoy this one in the meantime. Happy reading. =)

* * *

"Doctor…" she gasped, feeling like all the air had been knocked out of her, and the pressure on her ribcage was enough to make breathing difficult. She eased a little breath out and tried to tilt her head without placing any extra pressure on her ribs, watching the Weeping Angel out of the very corner of her field of vision.

The Doctor either hadn't heard her, or else wasn't paying attention.

She took another breath, about to call him again, when she accidentally blinked.

That was all it took.

The next half a second later, she was staring at the ceiling, and her head _hurt_.

The Angel had moved one hand up to grip her hair in its vice-like fingers, and yanked her head back. The other arm had tightened even further, and her hiss of pain instead turned to a wheeze as she struggled to get enough air into her lungs. She couldn't even do that properly, and she was starting to feel groggy and lightheaded.

She couldn't think straight. She certainly couldn't call out again. She could just barely see the Doctor from this angle, but with each step he took away, her hope of being noticed disappeared.

She focused on trying to draw in oxygen, and flexed her fingers, the digits numb with the lack of circulation. As she did so, her fingers rapped against the torch still clutched in her hand. Her eyes widened, and she immediately flicked the switch off.

The effect was instantaneous. The Doctor whirled around, eyes seeking danger, and immediately locked on the Weeping Angel that had Rose.

"Let her go." he said quietly, eyes blazing as he moved to help her. Of course, as he was still staring at it, it did nothing of the sort. Not that Rose thought it would let her go even if he weren't looking at it.

"Are you all right?" he asked, inspecting the grip it had on her and frowning.

"Been better." she admitted, the words more mouthed than actually spoken.

She still couldn't breathe, and by the truly thunderous expression on his face, she guessed he knew that. However, he didn't seem to have any brilliant ideas about how to fix the issue.

He just stood there, glaring at the Angel angrily. It was only a matter of time before someone had to back down.

Rose's head was pounding, her limbs felt oddly tingly, and everything seemed vaguely hazy around her, even when she tried to focus. She was gasping for air, but still she could not breathe.

She just barely registered the Doctor saying something, the words lost in the chaos, his expression turning from angry to alarmed before everything went dark and she lost consciousness.

When Rose eventually came to, she briefly wondered why everything was so dark. Groggily, she lifted a hand to her face to find a strip of cloth secured tightly over her eyes. Panicking slightly, remembering the Weeping Angel, she started to fumble with the knot on the blindfold.

"Don't touch it." the Doctor said warningly from somewhere off to her left.

"Doctor?" she asked, reluctantly dropping her hand, and at the same time starting to acknowledge the achy pain in her ribs as she breathed shakily through clenched teeth.

She heard the scrape of pebbles grating against stone beside her and felt gentle hands push her back as she tried to lean forward, squeezing her hand reassuringly.

"You definitely have some bruising, but I don't think anything is broken." he said, a strained note in his voice.

"What's going on? What happened?"

"You passed out. Not enough oxygen. The Angel and I came to a sort of… arrangement. It let you go, and I blindfolded both of us."

"That's a rubbish plan. What if it decides we're not worth the trouble and sends us for a stroll in like 1850 or something? Hang on, why did it grab me anyway? I thought it wants you?"

She could almost see the faint scowl on his face as he explained grimly, "You're its insurance. "

"Insurance?"

"It does need me, but by keeping you alive and under their control... they gain all the leverage."

"Well, that's their mistake then. Buys us another five minutes of life." she said with more confidence than she felt, "So what's next then?"

"We'll move deeper into the chamber I expect. It sounds like the tunnel is getting wider up ahead to me."

He suddenly leaned in, quickly whispering, "If we get separated and you get the chance, _run_. Get as far away as you can and try to contact Torchwood again."

She shook her head, even though neither of them could see the action. "Fat chance of that happening. Don't worry about me, just work on a plan."

"This isn't up for debate. One of us needs to get out and get help. If you see the opportunity, you're going to take it." he hissed.

"Like you'd do in my place?" she shot back, shaking her head again, even more vehemently this time, "There isn't a chance in a thousand that I'm leaving you here. So, tough. Besides, if Carol's still alive, she'll follow emergency protocols and be halfway back to base by now."

"Rose—" he started, exasperated, but they were cut off by the Weeping Angel.

It seized Rose by the collar of her shirt and yanked her to her feet before she could react to the sudden movement. The shuffling stumble of footsteps beside her suggested that the Doctor had been unceremoniously heaved to his feet in the same fashion. She was shoved forward, and she started walking.

She didn't dare run, not when she couldn't see anything, and a cold hand wrapped around her arm served as a further deterrent. She was made to walk in front of the Angel, with the Doctor leading the way several seconds ahead.

They walked in silence. If Rose ever tripped or stumbled, the Angel immediately pulled her back up and forced her to keep moving. They only stopped briefly when the Doctor started to lead them down the wrong path. The Weeping Angel released its hold on her and presumably set him on the right passage again, before almost immediately resuming its grasp on her.

The thought of fleeing had no sooner flitted through her mind before she discounted it, and the Angel's icy fingers were once more locked around her arm.

As they continued their silent march, Rose found her thoughts wandering back to what the Doctor had said about the origins of the Weeping Angels. He rarely mentioned the Time Lords.

When he'd worn a leather jacket, he'd always avoided answering any questions she'd asked him about his people or his home planet. After he'd regenerated, he had opened up a little bit every now and then, late at night, as they drifted through the time vortex, but never for very long.

She shivered, goosebumps running up and down her arm at the chill of the Angel's touch seeping through her sleeve. How could these stony _parasites_ have once been his people? How much of their original selves were even left by now?

For a moment she imagined the nameless statue beside her was the Doctor. She shivered again, and this time it had nothing to do with the chill.

Would he even recognize her? And if he did, would he care? Would all he was be gone immediately, or would he still be the Doctor, until the hunger for time energy slowly consumed him?

She remembered the signs of apprehension, even fear, as he described what the Weeping Angels really were, who they were.

Whatever shreds of their previous lives they may have retained, they clearly weren't his people any longer. They were husks, leeches, parasites preying on the futures of others to feed their own lonely existence. Fear and loneliness. In the end, those two things drove everyone—their victims and the Angels themselves.

Rose couldn't help pitying them, even as she loathed them.

They came to an abrupt stop. Still blindfolded, Rose had no idea where they were. When the Angel didn't make any move to start walking again, she realized they must've reached whatever destination they'd been trying to get to. It released its grip on her. That wasn't good. If she was really the hostage, it must've been convinced that whatever else was in the room with them was sufficient to contain her.

"There's some sort of structure here. Metal. Hundred years old at least." the Doctor called, his voice echoing slightly off the walls.

"'s as old as the aliens then." she called back.

"Exactly. I'm guessing this is their missing vault. So," he said, switching to address their captor, "What now? Drag the both of us here, sit us down for a nice cup of tea, and get me to unlock this door so I can spend the rest of my days running around as a tacky lawn ornament?"

The otherwise unbroken silence and inaction seemed to affirm this sarcastic trail of thought.

Sounding completely unfazed, the Doctor tried again, "Come on, it's a bit daft, even for you lot. I enjoy a good statue as much as the next bloke, but I don't fancy the maintenance. So I've got a better idea. You sit down here, I'll send you a few rabbits as a top-up every couple years, and we'll just be on our way."

No sooner had the sound of his trainers scraping on the floor reached her ears then the Angel had her once more in its vice-like grip. She gasped, the sudden, unexpected stab of pain from her already battered ribs enough to make her knees buckle if it weren't for the Angel's tight hold on her forcing her upright.

"Don't you dare." the Doctor said icily, his voice low with warning. "You let her go."

"Doctor. Don't." she rasped through tight-clenched teeth.

He didn't respond, and for a few precious seconds she thought he might actually hold his ground.

Fifteen short, _endless_ , seconds later... he relented, "Let her go and I'll open the vault."

She tried to protest, but found she couldn't manage anything more than a soft gurgle, all the air having been purged from her lungs. She was moments away from passing out again, and it took every ounce of effort she had left to just stay conscious.

The pressure vanished almost immediately, and Rose came crashing to her knees, instinctively throwing out her arms to catch herself. She gasped in great mouthfuls of the stale, mildewed air, finding it difficult to stay upright on all fours, forget about standing. Somehow, though, she managed.

A loud groan of straining metal screeched through the empty chamber as the Doctor worked on the vault. At least, that's what Rose thought was happening. In reality she had no way of knowing what was going on, but could only guess as to what sort of plan there might be now. If there was one at all, she considered soberly as she filled her lungs with more of the old air, wanting to protest but knowing the futility of such a measure.

The creaking continued, as the Doctor worked in silence. Finally, there was a series of sharp cracks, like the snapping of thick ice, and a dull thud of finality that reverberated through the cavern.

A low, solemn, menacing squeak of stiff hinges sounded through the chamber. Then, silence.

A rough thump and pained grunt next to Rose alerted her to the Doctor's presence once more.

"Doctor?" she croaked, still gasping for breath.

"Whatever you do, don't look at it." he hissed in her ear, quick fingers removing the blindfold from her face.

"Where is it?" she asked, alert, her ribs throbbing as she pushed to a kneeling position.

"Shh, listen."

At first, there was nothing to hear, but then something stirred within the vault, quiet, slithering, still dust sliding across the stone floor as it moved. She moved to stand up, but was thrust down again by an unflinching, stony hand. Rose was ready to risk opening her eyes, risk whirling on the Angel and running away with her back to the great snake, but she didn't get a chance to. For as soon as she opened her eyes, her jaw dropped.

There, bounding across the massive chamber like a gazelle in an open field, was Carol Johnson, holding one of the massive full-length mirrors above her head like a trophy, like she had stolen the gold medal from the Olympic runners and was making a mad dash for it.

Rose could not believe what she was seeing, but even as she had the good sense to shut her eyes tight once more at a particularly loud screech of rusted door hinges, the vault opening fully, Carol sprinted the last dozen feet and planted the mirror with a solid thud somewhere behind Rose.

"We have to go!" Carol half shouted, half wheezed, the words strangled on her lips as she sucked in massive lungfuls of breath.

As soon as they realized what was happening, Rose and the Doctor were on their feet, seizing the chance for escape quick as a wink. Still not daring to open her eyes for more than a brief, cursory squint to make sure she wouldn't slam into anything, Rose sprinted after Carol's rapidly retreating footfalls, which was no small feat with closed eyes, even though her quick glance had told her that there was nothing to run into for at least fifty feet in any direction.

A hand slid into hers before she had taken more than those first few steps, and tugged her ever faster forward, dashing after what Rose was convinced was the absolutely stark, raving mad Torchwood employee. She'd gone mental. Absolutely mental. But there wasn't time to worry about that now.

Together, the three of them retreated far across the room and, with brief peeks, Carol led them into a previously hidden passageway in the shadows of the massive rockface. They didn't stop until they had sequestered themselves deep within the alcove, tunnels branching off in all directions again, cramming into a tiny outlet in the rock that Rose was certain the basilisk would have no hope of squeezing into.

Once she could hear over her pounding heart properly again, whispering quietly as possible to avoid an echo, breathlessly furious confusion coloring her words, Rose rounded on Carol and demanded, "What was _that_? Where have you _been_? You were supposed to get out and get back to headquarters, not muck about down here!"

Carol continued to pant heavily, waving a hand weakly for a moment as she clutched at a stitch in her side.

"I was—I was trying to help. Ran into an Angel back a little ways outside the safe room. Tried to go after you. Lost my phone somewhere. I couldn't… Oh," she gasped, leaning back against the wall for support and sucking in great, wrenching lungfuls of the musty old air.

"'Halfway back to base by now,' hmm?" the Doctor recited, that sarcastic, smug, resigned little _I told you so_ hanging unsaid in his tone.

She shook her head, pushing down her growing irritation with some effort, and instead shot back somewhat childishly, "Right, well _you_ opened the vault."

"There wasn't any other way out of there." he protested.

She caught the flicker of worry in his expression, his eyes trailing down as she unconsciously put a hand to her aching ribs, and she let her fingers drop just as quickly. "I'll tell you what though." she piped up, purposefully drawing attention, and hoping to drag his away from her well-being for the moment.

"What?" the Doctor asked, his gaze even more intensely focused now.

"Basilisk." Rose said, smiling weakly.

With that too-forced little gasp of laughter punctuating the single word, the tension cracked, discongruent humor bubbling up in the Doctor as well in spite of the dire situation.

He beamed, nudging her briefly as he exclaimed, "I know! I never thought we'd see that one. Well, we can cross that off the list."

"What list?" Carol asked, confused.

"Oh, Rose and I had—we _have_ a list of some unlikely aliens we want to see."

"You had a basilisk on there?" she demanded incredulously.

"Yeah. Been wanting to see that one for years." Rose answered, regaining her composure.

"Well, _see_ it might not be quite the right term in these circumstances. But find one, yeah. Good old JK!"

"I told him she made them up." Rose admitted, elbowing the Doctor playfully.

"And I told you she didn't." he said, grinning widely, "Chips are on you next time."

"That was our bet." she explained briefly, as Carol looked more confused than ever, "Loser buys the winner lunch."

Carol just stared at them, utterly bewildered, and their shaky enthusiasm dimmed, sobering once more in the light of the danger they faced.

Finally, she looked between both of them, to their credit looking rather censured, and, almost seeming afraid of the potential answer, she asked, "What are we going to do now? We're still stuck down here, no phone, Weeping Angels mostly on the loose, and I haven't got any spare mirrors."

"Well, actually," Rose interrupted, digging Carol's mobile out of her pocket and holding it out for the girl, "We found this back in the safe room. Haven't been able to do much with it, though…"

"Don't worry, I have a plan." the Doctor announced confidently.

"Is it a good plan?" Rose questioned immediately, his recent plans flitting through her mind and not at all reassuring her.

"I have a plan." he repeated, a little less firmly this time.

She sighed exasperatedly, "Yes, but is it a _good_ plan?"

"We'll find out."

"Well, that's just not good enough. You are not going to start dying on me again. So, what have you got?"

He shoved one of his hands in his pockets, the other kneading his neck as he explained, "Well, according to legend, basilisks are so terrifyingly ugly that if they were ever to see themselves in a mirror they'd scare themselves to death. They've got notoriously poor eyesight though so you'd have to shove a mirror practically right into its face."

"You've got to be joking! Doctor, please tell me you're not going to run straight at that thing, basing your only plan off of an old bedtime story." she demanded incredulously.

When he didn't answer, Rose tried again, "There's got to be _some_ _other_ _way_ to kill it."

"The only other thing that can kill them is the crow of a rooster, and last time I checked I wasn't hiding any in my pockets. What about you, have you got any roosters on you?" the Doctor said, his voice laced with exasperated sarcasm.

"Not with me, no. Maybe the Angels can lend us one." she retorted sharply.

"This isn't helping." Carol interjected, eyes wide, agitated and terrified all at once.

"Well if anyone has a better idea I'm open to suggestions." the Doctor sighed, eyes darker now, as if the severity of the situation was finally sinking in.

Tense, expectant moments of silence passed. The Doctor had just taken a deep breath, seemingly preparing himself for the encounter to come, when the walls around them rattled.

They froze.

Nothing.

Nothing else moved. Nothing else made a noise. They waited with bated breath for some sign, but everything was still and silent.

Finally, in such a low whisper that Rose nearly missed it, Carol suggested, "Why don't we just trap it back in the thing it came out of?"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed, and he stared at Carol, utterly silent for several seconds until the poor girl stammered, "I mean, I don't know, but if we can get it back into its cage we wouldn't have to kill it at all, but, it's—sorry, it's a stupid idea…"

"Carol Johnson, that is _not_ a stupid idea. It's simple, it's brilliant!" the Doctor beamed.

"Could it work though?" Rose cut in, and some of his exuberance melted, "I'm guessing that thing isn't about to go back in there willingly, and basilisks are really smart, yeah?"

His bearing serious again for only a moment, the Doctor drew in a breath, quick smile on his lips preceding the carefree words on his tongue, but he seemed to think better of whatever he was about to say as his gaze met hers. That fake—and it _was_ fake, oh, she _knew_ it was fake—bravado drained out of him as he continued to regard her.

He ran a hand through his hair, mulling it over some more.

She had never reacted well when he'd lied and put up a brave front to keep her in the dark about what they were really facing before. She hadn't when he'd had blue eyes and that leather jacket, and she didn't with those brown eyes and pinstripes either. What's more was _he_ knew it too. Or, at least, his fully Time Lord self had. The look he gave her now, wary, serious, and not a little grim, sent cold fear running through her again, but also with it another surge of warm relief.

 _Oh, definitely the same Doctor._

"It could be difficult." he conceded, "It could be really, really… difficult."

He broke eye contact, staring down at a fixed spot in the rockface.

"But I'd just as soon not have the blood of _another_ species on my hands, and it's the best shot we're likely to get."

There was just a little catch in his voice as he said _another_ that made her impulsively reach for his hand, squeezing gently. He didn't acknowledge the gesture, but didn't pull back either, pretending to ignore it altogether. But, then, she was used to that, if not from this version of him, then certainly from the first one she'd agreed to travel with.

"Then let's do it." Rose said firmly, determination welling now that their course was set.

"Right," he nodded, snapping into action, "Ground rules, first. One," he held up a finger, counting them off as he went, "eyes shut unless absolutely necessary. One stray glance and you're dead, and we'd really like to avoid that. So, eyes closed. Two, there might still be Weeping Angels out there. They're terrified of the basilisk, so we can use that to our advantage. They'll be disoriented, moving blind, just like us, and you might get one free bump into one of them before they catch on what's happening. Still, they don't really need either of you, and if they know that too, they won't hold back anymore. One touch is all it takes. So, avoid them too if at all possible. And, finally, three, do not, and I repeat, _do not_ get separated. Our only chance is if we all stick together. Bigger target, of course, but it'll take three of us to get that door closed again. We get one shot at this."

"Got it. Don't look around. Don't touch anything. Don't wander off. Let's get to it then." Rose remarked, that not-quite-fake brazen bluster that she'd picked up these last two years slipping in again as she squeezed past Carol and the Doctor and peeked into the empty hallway.

Her fingers tightened against the rough, sharp creases of rock digging into her skin as she heard a faint echo sound through the passageway. She could feel the Doctor stiffen beside her without having to look.

They were so close in the confined space she could feel his breath hitch as he moved to slide around her, but she wasn't having it.

Not this time.

He rushed headlong into danger all the time. This was her turn.

Closing her eyes, she pushed off into the dark unknown, using her fingers to trail the side of the tunnel, and fumbling as quietly and steadily as she could manage towards the large, cavernous chasm where the basilisk, and their only hope for entrapping it, lay waiting.

Rose stretched her free hand out behind her, on a whim, instinctively, and brushed against an arm, a sleeve, clumsily skimming through the air for a fraction of a second before his fingers found and clasped hers. She wasn't quite sure why she'd done that, but the surge of relief and determination it gave her was undeniable as she pushed forward.

Her other hand, the one dancing gingerly across the rockface, was plunged suddenly into nothingness, the wall falling away all at once as she passed into the gaping cavern.

This was it. No turning back now.

With a little spurt of guttering determination, she pushed off once more, footsteps echoing loudly, far too loudly, through the chamber.

The Doctor and Carol were right behind her, and any sounds from the cave, any noises from the basilisk, were masked by the skittering of loose pebbles and the heavy tramping of feet as they stumbled forward. Even Rose, who was actively trying to muffle her footsteps, could hear the chamber echo with her movements. And yet, silence, from all but their own footfalls. It set every danger sense Rose had to jangling.

They couldn't do this. She had to know what was going on.

She blinked, a quick open and closed that lasted only long enough for her to catch the barest glance at her surroundings…

And the great snake looming off to their right.

System flooding with adrenaline, her eyes snapped tightly shut, and she practically leapt to the side, away from the massive serpent, dragging the Doctor, and Carol, along with her without even sparing time to give a verbal warning.

Startled, they stumbled, and Carol lost her footing, the sound of knees crashing to the ground reverberating back from all directions. But with a heave from the both of them, Rose and the Doctor yanked Carol back to her feet, the hapless operative practically flying out behind them as they ran.

The Doctor must have taken a peek himself, because he nudged their course off to the right again, picking up speed.

Rose stumbled back, something large, and very heavy, very powerful crashing into the floor just in front of her. She threw herself to one side, sprinting away from the impact, when, suddenly, the toe of her shoe connected with something that practically flew back at the collision, skittering loudly across rough and uneven stone.

Instinctively, Rose opened her eyes to look at what she had accidentally kicked, and, as she did, her heart stopped in her chest.

She first caught sight of some sort of long, pointed object still sliding over the jagged terrain, and then, she saw the basilisk.

It was just before them now, and it was looking straight at her with its great, bulbous eyes the color of milky, old tree sap.

Time froze, and she stood there, mid-stride, trapped staring into those cloudy, sickly-yellow eyes.

Those great, giant… blind eyes?

In a flash, the basilisk was surging towards them again, and Rose once again dove to one side, desperately dragging the others with her.

She almost wasn't fast enough, and as she moved, the serpent's gaping maw, bristling with its razor-sharp fangs, flashed past her, and she was yanked back for a moment as one of its needle-like teeth snared the hem of her jacket. But it only lasted for one terrifying heartbeat, and then she was free, fang tearing through fabric and allowing her to escape unscathed, if not her jacket.

Rose struggled to focus, to push back the pounding adrenaline that threatened to overtake her completely. That was when she realized that the _thing_ she had launched across the room was one of the basilisk's fangs.

"It's blind!" she shouted, louder than was necessary, but she could barely hear anything over the sound of her own blood rushing through her, echoing in her ears.

"What?" the Doctor shot back, and she wasn't sure if he was having hearing issues too, or if this was one of the rhetorical _whats_ that he was so partial to.

"The basilisk is blind. I saw it! You can open your eyes." Rose reiterated, shifting directions to head straight for the containment chamber at the center of the cavern, putting on a spurt of speed as they grew closer, closer, _nearly_ _there_.

"Rose, move!" a sharp voice called out, hands simultaneously shoving her to the ground.

The basilisk crashed between her and the others, its gargantuan mass missing her by mere inches, barreling through where she had been but a fraction of a second before, and slamming headlong into the floor, churning up rock and dust with the sheer force of its collision.

Rose scrambled to her feet, thoroughly cut off from Carol and the Doctor, and bolted towards the vault, catching a glimpse of the others almost skidding into the snake as they reversed directions.

Another strike, fangs flashing in the split-second as they arced through thick air, seeking prey, and Rose tried to yell out a warning, but everything was happening so fast.

The Doctor threw himself to the ground, rolling quickly as the bulk of the serpent nearly crushed him.

Carol kept running, faster than Rose ever thought the girl would be capable of, her legs pumping like the blades of a fan set to their fastest setting in the hot season, when suddenly she changed direction, swerving towards something lying on the ground a stone's throw, or basilisk's strike, away. As Carol bent to pick up the broken fang, Rose saw the snake slithering rapidly towards her.

"Carol, look out!" she shrieked, but it was too late.

As Carol looked up, cracked basilisk fang clutched in her hands, the serpent surged forward with blinding speed, mouth open in a terrifying display of teeth and endless, gaping gullet, and abruptly snapped it shut, seizing her in its powerful jaws. It shook her for a moment, then tossed her aside, seeming to spit her from its mouth as though stung.

The source of its displeasure dropped to the ground just as quickly: a single red Converse, thrown by the Doctor.

Carol arced through the air, the fang she had been holding flying out of her slack grip, and, with an audible thud, she hit the ground and skidded across the cavern's floor, completely limp, with one of the basilisk's other fangs sticking prominently out of her chest.

"Rose, get out of there!" the Doctor yelled as the snake turned its ugly, rearing head in her direction.

She didn't need to be told twice. Dragging her gaze from Carol's prone form some fifty feet away, Rose sprinted again towards the stasis chamber, though she knew at this point there was no way they could close it—even if they could get the basilisk inside somehow—and much less so on her own. But she didn't have a better plan, so she ran.

Something flashed in the edge of her peripheral vision, and Rose's gaze shot to the object just off her frantic path. It was the half-fragmented fang Carol had grabbed before.

Moving somehow even faster, Rose leaned down as she raced forward, reaching out a hand and snatching the tooth with her outstretched fingertips.

She felt the basilisk coming more than heard it, and turned the dip into a roll, somersaulting to the side just as the snake snapped at where she had been so closely that she could feel the woosh of air being displaced around it.

As it was, the serpent missed her with its deadly fangs, but still smashed into her legs as she tumbled, and the force behind its lunge was staggering. She was knocked back, and landed badly, the force of her fall concentrated on her injured shoulder, and rattling bones and muscles both. She gasped, air leaving her just as quickly as pain came to fill her up.

"Rose, come on, get up." a familiar voice hissed in her ear, hurriedly urging her as he helped her to her feet.

She choked back another cry of pain and clutched the fang still in her hand, knuckles white from her deathgrip.

They had no sooner started to move towards the stasis chamber once more when Rose turned to track the basilisk, only to find the massive serpent coiling for another strike. She shoved the Doctor forward, out of the way, even as she darted out of its path, but she was too slow.

The snake struck with even more force than the last time, but this time Rose managed to roll with the impact. She ended on her feet, somehow, miraculously still holding the fang in her hand and not managing to puncture herself in the process.

She watched helplessly, sick, as the Doctor, however, was sent flying, skidding across jagged stone and sliding to a stop, on his side, unmoving, some thirty feet too far with the basilisk between them.

She was on her own.

The basilisk turned to go after the Doctor, a tempting target, still lying prone on the ground.

Rose dashed for the containment module, so close, nearly there, and, as she had hoped, the basilisk, scenting her, or perhaps picking up the manic vibrations resounding through the chamber as her feet flew across the rough stone, slithered after her instead.

She sprinted the last few feet, and planted herself in front of the door, intending to jump out of the way and trick the serpent into the chamber. But when the snake closed the distance between them, it pulled up short before the vault, hissing and spitting angrily, flicking out its forked tongue towards Rose. It circled the container twice, shaking its head violently as it dipped nearer to its entrance, then pulled back as if it had been zapped. It hissed again, and turned back towards the Doctor, probably thinking him an easier meal.

She couldn't let it get him. She had to do something. Something audacious, and probably fatal, but the options were practically nonexistent now, so she leapt into action.

Planting herself at one of the outside corners of the vault, Rose fumbled in her pockets for some sort of… something. Anything. Her fingers closed around the battered remains of her mobile phone, and she yanked it out and chucked it at the basilisk's head. She missed the head by several feet, and the phone slammed into its neck with an audible _smack_.

It may not have been her intended target, but it still accomplished her mission.

The basilisk whirled round, fangs bared and hissing furiously. It slithered towards her again, and, this time, Rose didn't bother moving. The serpent paused only briefly as it neared the chamber, but the fact that Rose was not near the entrance seemed to hearten it, and it began to coil up for what Rose was sure would be its most deadly strike yet.

And still she held her ground, feet planted firmly on the stone, and tried desperately to keep in mind whatever she could remember about the ending of the second Harry Potter book.

But Harry had had a proper weapon. All she had was a broken fang and grim determination. But she also wasn't Harry.

She stared down the basilisk, watching as it wound itself up some thirty feet away, and eased the bend in her knees, gripping the fang in her hand tight. When the basilisk sprang forward, mouth open, teeth bared, moving in a blur that was just slow enough to register before it was upon its target, Rose was prepared.

At the precise moment it struck, she leapt upwards, putting every ounce of energy she had into the jump, and squeezing every inch she could out of it, kicking her legs up and out.

Everything moved too quickly for her to process, working entirely on instinct.

The basilisk crashed beneath her, its breath hot on her calf, and she planted her left hand on the muzzle of the enormous serpent, using its momentum to propel her up on top of its head, and drive the fang through its left eye, deep into its brain, even as its strike carried it forward to slam into the wall. The impact sent both Rose and the basilisk to the ground in a chaotic sprawl.

The rock rushed up to meet her, and then both pain and darkness mingled in her mind, threatening to engulf her.

"Rose!" a hoarse, cracked voice resounded through the cavern, and it was loud enough to pull her back from the brink.

She groaned, and pushed blearily until she was sitting upright in the chaos, vision blurred and delayed, like a muddled watercolor filter of her regular sight. She coughed, and collapsed under the abrupt clamor of pain ringing through her as she tried to prop herself up with her bad arm.

But before she even had a chance to fall, the Doctor caught her and supported her, while, with shaking hands, he lifted her from the floor and carried her well out of the reach of the basilisk, even as it lay still and silent, splayed across the cavern.

Rose dragged her eyes open again and forced some measure of focus from the bleariness, watching as the Doctor frantically searched for signs of injury, his fingers positively trembling as he worked.

She wanted to say something, but couldn't wrestle more from her abused lungs and body than a disgruntled croak. It broke his concentration, and drew his wild eyes up and over her face for a moment. She _tried_ to smile, but he was unconvinced, concerns not the least bit eased, and he resumed his examination with a fervor she had never witnessed from him before.

She could move her relatively uninjured arm a bit, and, with a little more effort than usual, she stilled his hands, forcing him to look back at her again. She waited this time, taking a moment to compose herself and get a feel for the words before she tried again to speak.

"'M all right." she said, the words coming out raspier than she would have liked, but still intelligible enough.

He couldn't even manage that much, and, again, her efforts to reassure him just left him more agitated. It was only her hand, weakly, but firmly clasping his that stopped him from resuming his pointless and desperate examination.

"I've had worse." she groaned, pushing herself up a little with his help, and scrounging up a small smile this time. "Think we're about tied now for most dramatic stunt of the day."

That did get a half-smile from him, but it was weak and somehow just made him look even smaller. He chuckled wetly, and gathered her to him, holding her lightly in consideration of her bruised ribs and injured shoulder.

"No, you got me there. That definitely beat out my little Time Lord party trick." he joined in, voice breaking unsteadily towards the end.

He tightened his hold just a fraction and said fiercely, "From now on we stick together, yeah?"

She pulled back to look into his face, readily showing her every emotion he wasn't good at talking about, and behind the fear, the desperation, the protective edge he never really bothered to hide, she could see the slight uncertainty still there, mirrored in her own eyes she knew too. The only cure for that would be time. Time to become fully reacquainted, and reconcile everything they had been through…

But she didn't need to perfectly know him or be entirely comfortable to know her response: "Together." she agreed, no doubt in that at least, and slipped her hand into his in a gesture that was familiar to both.

The tension bled away, and, finally, the frenetic fit that had gripped him when she fell seemed to loosen its grip as its sway ebbed and faded.

"You're sure you're all right?" he asked as he helped her to her feet.

"Been better," she admitted, "but I'm good, yeah."

She gazed across the cavern, eyes trailing the length of the basilisk's still form.

Suddenly, the color drained from her face as she realized, "Oh, _Carol_."

They moved towards the Torchwood agent, the Doctor supporting Rose as she struggled to find her balance.

Carol was sprawled in a heap, still and unmoving, precisely where she had been thrown, with the basilisk's fang protruding grimly from her chest. Rose crashed next to the girl, and the Doctor sat across from her, wordlessly taking in the all-too-obvious sign of her demise.

She hadn't stood a chance, really.

"She was nice." Rose said dazedly, staring morosely down at the unfortunate girl.

"She never complained. Always read the briefings top to bottom. She… she read the entire employee manual her first day." she laughed weakly, continuing with a bittersweet lilt, "Never knew anyone to read that thing. But she was just… she was there. All the time. Whenever anyone needed anything. She hadn't been there that long. Just joined up last month."

The Doctor listened in silence until she finished, and offered expressionlessly, "She seemed like a good person. Quick. Clever. _So much_ cleverer than most of that lot."

Rose knew he didn't really mean that as an insult on Torchwood, rather as a shining compliment to Carol, and let him go on without protest.

"And, I suppose, we never would have made it this far without her."

The blankness was starting to crack now, and Rose couldn't decide if the mixture of emotions on his face were mostly of sympathy or guilt.

"She did it though. Even tried to save that thing." she said, vaguely gesturing towards the basilisk. "No one else can say that."

"I didn't ask, has she got any other family? Friends, or…"

Rose shook her head, "She had a few mates at Torchwood, but, it was just her and her mum and sister. No one left to tell about what happened now."

The Doctor nodded, and she finally decided his expression held both, but guilt hung heavy from him most of all.

"You tried to save them. Tried to warn them. There was nothing more anyone could've done. Carol knew that too. She never once tried to put that on either of us. So don't you start now."

"They were my people though, the Weeping Angels. My problem. They wouldn't have been here if it weren't for me."

"Ugh… But there was still stuff lurking in my basement without that." Carol mumbled, pained.

Rose and the Doctor both jumped in surprise, trading equally bewildered looks as they regarded Carol's presumably dead form.

"You what?" Rose ventured, voice high and croaky with shock.

Carol screwed up her face in a grimace, and she groaned, visibly struggling for a moment before opening her eyes, just a crack. She looked up at them sitting over her, and looked very confused.

"Did we win?" she asked after a moment, her tone barely above a whisper. "Did you lock that thing back up?"

"Not exactly—No, wait, hold on a minute," the Doctor spluttered, "How are you still talking?"

"What does it matter? Carol, are you all right?" Rose shot back.

The Doctor shot her a look. "She's got a basilisk fang stuck in her. Her veins should be pumping with enough venom to kill the whole of London town. Unless..." he examined the area around the fang, and pulled back Carol's jacket a bit to reveal—

"Is that a Torchwood vest?" Rose demanded incredulously.

"Seems to be. And I'll bet, _yep!_ " he faintly crowed, pulling out the tooth with a little tug and rightly beaming as the vest beneath showed extensive damage from both the fang itself, as well as the venom it released, but yet remained completely, entirely, _absolutely_ intact without so much as a pinprick penetrating all the way through. "Look at that! I have got to get me one of these. Still, not really my color. Couldn't get it in a lovely shade of orange then, could you?" he babbled happily.

Carol looked between the two of them exhaustedly. "Sorry, but could someone please tell me what's happening?"

"What's happening is that _we_ are getting out of here. We are going to get Torchwood down here, clean up the rest of this mess, and then _we_ are going to go cash in the longest time off. Just rest and relaxation, shopping and spa trips. Just you wait." Rose laughed, and the three of them, all in varying states of elation and confusion both, were each just as relieved as the others to have survived, despite the odds.


	7. A Hand to Hold

**A/N** : This chapter is a bit shorter. But it's only because there's more coming! I have the ending practically finished, but I wasn't entirely happy with a few parts of it. Decided to post this first bit while I wrap up the final half, as this part cut off pretty well and it's been more than a month since I last updated. The Doctor and Rose are finally out of the woods (for now...), so these last two chapters will be less adventure and more fluff, but I hope you'll still like them. =) Now I just need to finish that last pesky chapter...

* * *

"Be careful," the Doctor warned as several operatives wheeled a closed and mirrored crate past, "They might be locked up now, but they'll take any chance they can to escape."

Torchwood had finally pulled through and arrived on the Johnson estate in force, with two full specialist teams and half a dozen reflective containment vaults in tow. As it turned out, they had been trying to establish contact with _them_ for the past hour, but some mixture of the storm outside and interference from something in the dense cave systems had scattered all communication.

Rose had gone back upstairs to make another emergency call and had instead been greeted with swarms of professional but understandably agitated Torchwood operatives in full tactical gear breaking down the doors they had barricaded all throughout the house.

They had already lifted Carol out and taken her back with the medics, even though she was relatively uninjured from the whole ordeal.

The Doctor had decided to stay to oversee the cleanup process, and Rose had refused to leave as well.

The medics had insisted on examining him first, but when he couldn't shake them off he had irritatedly listed off his precise diagnosis and curtly declined the prescribed painkillers suggested for such. That had earned him a little breathing room, at least, and the medics had moved on to Rose. He'd already examined her of course, but he didn't entirely trust that he'd caught everything without his sonic screwdriver or any proper equipment, so when she protested as he had, he was surprisingly enthusiastic about the idea.

She had shot him a look that was two parts irritation, one part betrayal, and two parts _you're-going-to-pay-for-that-later_.

Ah well, she would understand why he had done it… he hoped.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and watched the Torchwood teams work.

Pete separated from one of the clusters of agents and moved towards the Doctor, joining him in overseeing the operation from the back. "I'm never going to make sense of this." he said, shaking his head as he read over the preliminary report.

"Not the sort of thing you're used to then?" the Doctor quipped.

"Three separate alien species, two of them definitely hostile, multiple timeline discrepancies, a Torchwood agent's residence breached with defenses completely bypassed, and two civilian casualties? No, Doctor, that's not an ordinary run of the mill operation in my books. You three were lucky to get out of that alive."

"Oi, that wasn't luck. We had a proper plan and everything! _Well_ ," he amended, considering the events for a moment, "We had most of a plan. Or… an idea of one. All right, so it was a fair bit of luck, but I always win the pot. Most of the time. But the deck was definitely stacked in our favor." he rambled, only stopping when Pete gave him a look not unlike a teacher might to the class clown.

"Doctor," Pete said sternly, pointing a finger at him, "You could have died. And if you think I'm going to deal with the aftermath of that mess, you can think again. Heaven knows what I'm going to have to do about Johnson's family."

The Doctor continued to stare at the man, but couldn't quite meet his gaze.

Pete sighed. "I'm not pinning that on you. But it happened. And we can't do anything about it now. Better to lose this house than all of London, but, Doctor, these things are dangerous, and we need to do better."

"I know." he muttered, eyes downcast, making a pretense of watching the agents again to avoid looking at Pete.

"Right. So that was the official company response. Now, my personal opinion, and all things considered, I'd say you three did a fine job. It was a right bloody mess, but you made it out well enough. Johnson should make a full recovery, and you two look like you've seen the wrong end of a sanding belt, but you seemed to stave off the medics well enough, which is no mean feat." Pete rubbed at his forehead wearily, but gave him a small, reassuring smile this time, "So, good job."

"Thanks…" the Doctor answered a little awkwardly, not entirely sure if he should strictly speaking be _accepting_ thanks given that most of the reason they had made it out at all was because of Rose and Carol, not him. But then it would be rude to say nothing. Human customs really were very odd sometimes.

Pete nodded a few times, then looked around for something. Seeing no one, he turned back to the Doctor and asked in a more serious voice, "How's Rose doing?"

"Contusions to the shoulder and several ribs, suspected concussion, abrasions along the—"

"No," Pete interrupted, staring at him meaningfully, "How is she doing with…" he trailed off rather vaguely, gesturing to all of him.

"With—Oh." The Doctor absently reached up to rub the back of his neck, trying to figure out how he wanted to answer that one, or… actually, if he knew what was going on there to begin with, because everything was still very new, and he wasn't sure if she—

"Good." he answered decisively.

"Good?" Pete pressed, raising an eyebrow.

He thought back on everything that had happened in the past… blimey, was it only the past six hours?

The way she'd dragged him out of Torchwood, angry and confused still, he knew, and had taken the first opportunity she could to get someplace familiar.

That run-down little chippy with the too-salty food where they'd talked about regenerations and meta-crises.

Running for their lives, _together_ , and the way she had still held his hand through most everything.

When she'd slapped him after they'd been cornered in the Johnsons' kitchen—Okay, admittedly that one had mixed messages, but it had proved that she was still very much… well, _concerned_ for him would probably be the best term.

The way she'd reacted when he got shot, and had refused to leave him.

How she'd practically clung to him during definitely one of their best, in his view at least, post-danger hugs.

The sudden release that near-death experience had given them both, and the easy banter that inevitably followed.

Every little gesture and smile, even with the distance and uncertainty between them...

"Yeah, definitely." he hummed softly, watching Rose impatiently brush off and push past the medics, huffing as she made her way through the bustling cavern back towards them.

Pete followed his gaze and gave a little nod as Rose approached, glancing down at his report again briefly.

"Everything check out?" he asked, making a few new marks on the pad.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but 'm pretty sure if they have their way they're gonna hook me up with enough meds to make junkies out of the lot of us."

"Sounds like an expensive habit. Rubbish on the teeth, to say nothing of the brain. Hope the job covers dental. I rather like these teeth." the Doctor remarked, grinning cheekily.

"We don't really have the funding for a company dental plan. I think that's why everyone was so keen on helping me find you." she shot back, matching him smile for smile.

"What, so they could just contract me out?"

"Contract? Ooh, good luck telling them that."

"So I'm just cheap labor?"

"Mm," she shrugged her shoulders noncommittally, "Free labor, more like."

"Well that's just _rude_." he huffed.

"Service with a smile?" she asked innocently.

Pete cleared his throat, loudly interrupting the protest already on the Doctor's lips, "Well it's good to see you two are getting on." he said trenchantly, "I think we're just about done here. Don't mind me. I'll just go finish up and bring the car around while you two hash the rest of this fascinating topic out."

They traded looks that were _partly_ contrite, but slightly thrilled as well. They never had been exceptionally good with timing, or setting—their entire encounter with Queen Elizabeth had made that fairly apparent—and that at least didn't seem to have changed at all.

As Pete moved off, Rose drew closer, and there was a lull as they both turned to watch the last few Torchwood specialists carry out their duties.

Rose's fingers twitched towards her injured shoulder for a moment, face scrunching, before clearing as she dropped her hand back to her side. It was subtle, and took only the briefest space of time to occur, but that did not stop the Doctor from noticing, eyes flicking from her tight expression to her shoulder.

"What did the medics say?" he asked lightly.

She looked up at him and made a point of rolling her eyes a little. "'Bout what you'd said before: concussion, lots of bumps and bruises. Nothing too serious."

"Did they give you painkillers?"

"Nah. The stuff they've got right here on 'em is overdoing it a bit. And this Earth even has some weird substitutes, so I try an' steer clear of them best I can."

"Smart move. Which reminds me, I'll want to have a look over your mother's medicine cabinet and anything else you have to see what all is safe to use around here."

"I had mum chuck all the aspirin if that's what you're worried about."

"What? No. _Well_ , yes, actually, now that you mention it, thank you, but I meant check for anything that's likely to cause health problems that you lot won't properly research for another few centuries or decades at least."

"Oh. Do you get a lot of that then?"

"More than you would believe, yeah."

They lapsed into sudden silence again as the Torchwood teams, all moving as one, heaved the body of the basilisk onto a series of portable trolleys and carefully carted it towards the waiting vehicles beyond the cave.

"Doctor, why was that thing blind?" Rose broke the silence, voice several levels lower than it had been as the stiff and still form of the great serpent moved past them accompanied by the agents.

His head felt abruptly heavy as he turned to regard her.

Her expression was curious and confused as she gazed up at him and quickly added, "I mean, well, it was lucky for us, but they're not normally blind, yeah? Least not in Harry Potter."

"No, they're not." he agreed flatly, eyes trailing after the retreating figures and the burden they bore.

"That one was old. No special circumstances. No thrilling surprises. Everything here is just old, tired: this house, the basilisk, the Angels, the aliens in the tunnels, all of it." he rubbed his eyes wearily, "Everything here was ancient and dying long before we ever set foot in this place."

"I dunno," Rose said after a moment, studying his features intently, "It's a time for new things too, I reckon."

That took him aback a bit. And wasn't that annoying? He hadn't felt this off-kilter in such a long time. What was worse was the hopeful little smile that crept its way across his face against his wishes as he was unable to stop reading into, and reacting to every little thing she said.

"Yeah?" he asked, grin widening just a bit as they regarded each other, and, _really_ , he thought, he didn't mind, would never mind, having just a little less control so long as it meant she was there.

"Yes" she agreed emphatically, smiling in return, and quickly added, "I mean, new new Earth that's the same but just a bit different, and, well, new new Doctor. Gotta admit, that's an awful lot of new-ness."

"Very true. All this newness is of course purely subjective, since the old-new residents of this new new Earth would say it's just Earth and we're the new residents from a completely different new new Earth. And of course new doesn't necessarily mean very different, just a bit, well, _new_. What… what's your take on new things? Good or bad new, I mean? Hypothetically speaking." he jabbered, finally tapering off weakly, his nervous energy simply having served to fuel the rant.

Rose laughed.

"That word has absolutely no meaning anymore. Reckon that was your plan all along." she teased, gently avoiding the question, but gave his hand a light squeeze.

Pete finished bringing the car around, and, as the rest of the agents ushered them out of the cave system, all the while she continued to hold his hand.

He hummed happily as they made their way away from the Johnson estate, and decided that, overall, she was taking this very well indeed. Much, much better than he'd feared, if not quite as well as he'd hoped, and he chose to interpret the fact that she insisted on the seat in the back, with him, rather than the front which definitely had the greater legroom, as a good sign.

And that she held his hand the entire way back to the city was, perhaps, the greatest sign of them all.

* * *

Rose stared up at the empty expanse of her ceiling, her eyes absently tracing patterns in the paint for the umpteenth time.

A solitary flash of lightning made her jump, gaze snapping to the window, but by the time she looked there was nothing but the inky blackness once more. The soft rumble of thunder that followed did nothing for her nerves, and although she knew there was nothing there, Rose still found it difficult to look away from the window.

There were no angel statues here. None. No statues of any kind, actually. Even so…

She groaned, rubbing at her tired eyes, and swung her legs out of bed.

The carpet was cool beneath her feet as she got up and gingerly made her way through the darkened room.

Everything was very quiet in the Tyler house at night. That wasn't always the case, not with little Tony around, anyway, but tonight it was almost eerily silent.

The floor of the hallway was colder than the carpet of her room, and she recoiled slightly as her foot touched the surface, shivering at the contact. She pressed on, the discomfort minimal compared to sitting in bed, jumping at every imagined noise and face at the window, and padded softly through the hall towards the kitchen.

There was a light coming from somewhere beyond the corridor, even though everything was still silent. When she reached the end of the hallway, curious, she peered around the room, not quite sure who would be up at this hour. The spiky brown hair popping over the back of the couch gave her a pretty good idea though…

"Should've guessed you'd be up." Rose said as she crossed to the other side of the couch and sat down next to him.

"Couldn't sleep?" the Doctor asked.

She shook her head, "No. I keep expecting an Angel to jump out at me. You?"

"I'm all right. I just don't need to sleep yet." he said with a half-hearted shrug.

He looked at her and grinned slightly, but Rose noticed that he wasn't quite looking at _her_ , but rather into the shadowed corner just behind her. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing.

The tea kettle let out a low whistle, and the Doctor abruptly got up and went to tend to it.

Rose felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, and she couldn't resist turning around for a moment to make sure no one was behind her.

There was nothing there.

Of course, she hadn't really expected there to be, but after all of the things she'd seen that day, well… she couldn't really blame herself for being a bit jumpy.

Rose turned to face the kitchen and leaned back against the couch cushions. Her gaze roamed across the room, the shadows cast by the soft yellow-white lights seeming to conceal hidden secrets as they took on a life of their own in the gently flickering illumination. Rain rapped against the window panes quietly, and a silent draft blew through the room, brushing against her like the touch of a cold, wraithlike hand.

Rose pulled her knees to her chest, and rested her chin against them. Her home seemed strangely alien and hostile after the terrifying whirlwind of events that had transpired in the past 24 hours.

The scrape of a glass against the wooden cupboard and the clink of a mug on the countertop caught her attention and made her sit up again. The sound of faintly hissing steam and pouring water filled the air, as the Doctor filled two mugs and carefully made his way back to the couch.

He sat down on the sofa and handed her one of the cups, steam lazily wending its way up from the dark liquid within. She accepted the drink gratefully, breathing in the slightly bitter, pungent aroma of the tea, and cupping her hands around the warm mug.

The Doctor contemplated his own cup for a moment, before sipping at it thoughtfully. She drank a little of the tea, and felt herself relax almost immediately as the warmth of the liquid and the familiar taste of the tea reminded her of many a nippy Autumn night with her mum, back when the only things she had to worry about were school and her grades.

Rose yawned, and leaned her head against his shoulder, pulling her feet up off of the ground and curling up on the couch, blinking sleepily.

He looked down at her, a smile ghosting his features.

"I'm glad you're back." she said with a kind of quiet smile of her own.

"Me too." he responded, beaming back at her.

There was a pause as they both sipped at their tea, and Rose snuggled deeper into the sofa.

The Doctor eventually broke the silence, as he leaned back, and, still grinning, asked, "So, what do you do here, generally? When you're not being chased by rather angry lawn statues, that is."

Rose bent and set her mug on the coffee table, then sat back, nestling down into her seat. The Doctor shifted position slightly, propping his elbow up against the back of the couch and resting his head in his hand, while wrapping his other arm around her as she leaned back against him.

After they both were situated she began, "Well, there's still a Henrik's in this world. There weren't any sassy time-travelling aliens here to blow it up this time. I figured we could go by there sometime, if you want." she shrugged lightly, and continued, "They have a new selection of suits in, and some trainers, if you want something like your old outfit. Or you could get something else entirely. I just figured you probably don't want to go running about without a change of clothes."

And, with that, Rose began to describe the new gadgets and locations they'd never seen before, the various diners and shops they had gone to for weekly TARDIS shopping trips, and all of the little places they hadn't visited on their adventures.

* * *

The Doctor glanced around the room, his gaze watchful and alert despite the early hour. His posture was relaxed, as he lay against the couch, but his eyes were sharp and constantly roaming the room.

Rose mumbled something and shifted in her sleep beside him. A smile touched his lips as he looked down at her.

They'd talked for several hours about various topics: her family, new shops, Torchwood, little discoveries she'd made, assorted adventures he'd had, and so on. It wasn't until the early hours of the morning that Rose had finally dozed off in the middle of explaining Tony's tendency to throw his food on the floor the moment everyone looked away.

He'd considered moving her to her bed, but she had looked so peaceful on the couch, and she was so obviously exhausted that he didn't want to risk waking her.

He was tired too, even though he'd said earlier that he wasn't. He'd been lying then, since, as much as he hated to admit it, he had been spooked by the sudden appearance of the Weeping Angels. And, now, sitting in the largest and most open, most vulnerable room in the house with all but one light extinguished, he couldn't quite relax enough to fall asleep.

Footsteps echoed down the hall, and the Doctor craned his neck to see over the back of the couch, shooting a wary, furtive glance down the darkened hallway.

Pete Tyler shuffled into the living room, wearing a dark dressing gown and heading towards the kitchen. He paused as he saw the Doctor peering at him from over the sofa, and raised an eyebrow when he noticed Rose snoring softly away next to him.

He padded quietly over to the other side of the furniture until he stood in front of them, and asked softly, "What's this then?"

"We were having a cup of tea and talking for a while, and she dozed off." he replied in equally hushed tones.

"Why is she out here in the first place?" Pete asked, seeming rather bemused.

The Doctor hesitated, remembering how they had both cast frequent sidelong looks into the darkened recesses of the room. How the smallest flicker of the solitary light had made him jumpy, while Rose had just clenched her fists until not only her knuckles but also her fingers had turned white.

Pete waited for the Doctor to respond, but as the silence stretched on, he finally asked, "Is this about the Weeping Angels?"

Again, the briefest of pauses.

"Yes." he finally answered.

Pete nodded, seeming to understand, at least a little.

"Are you planning on staying on the couch all night?"

The Doctor glanced down at Rose for a moment. She was smiling slightly, and looked like she probably wouldn't wake up anytime soon.

"Most likely."

"Well that didn't take long." he muttered under his breath so quietly that the Doctor almost didn't catch it. Bringing his voice back to a more audible level, Pete asked, "It's a bit nippy in here. D'you want a blanket or something?"

He nodded. Though the cold didn't particularly bother him, he knew Rose might find it uncomfortable. Pete stepped back into the darkened hallway for a few moments, and returned shortly with several thick blankets and a pillow that he piled in a heap at the end of the sofa.

"Thanks." the Doctor said gratefully.

Pete waved a hand tiredly, and stumbled over to the kitchen.

"I only came for some tea." he said in passing, as a minute later he trundled back towards his room, a cup of steaming tea in his hand.

He halted by the lightswitch and asked, "Can I shut this off, or is that a problem?"

He thought about it for a moment, taking a deep, steadying breath, then said, "You can turn it off."

Pete flicked off the switch, and the room swam in darkness once more. They were natural, empty shadows, thankfully. Not the darker, deeper shadows of things lurking within.

"We do have some security in this house, Doctor. We work for Torchwood after all. It would be difficult for a Weeping Angel to get into this place." Pete called through the dark room, his receding footsteps following immediately after, not even pausing for a possible reply.

The Doctor thought about Pete's words for a second, his posture relaxing and a little of the tightness in his stomach loosening. While it didn't mean Angels _couldn't_ get in, Pete was right: with whatever Torchwood safeguards there were in place, it certainly meant they were less likely to.

He reached down to the foot of the couch and spread the blankets out, putting one around Rose and carefully tucking her in. He pulled the second blanket up over himself, and stretched out the third like a top sheet over the first two blankets. This being done, he turned so he was now completely on his side, allowing just slightly more room, and shoved the pillow behind his head.

As he settled himself down, Rose snuggled against him, face burrowing into his shoulder as she breathed softly. He allowed himself the privilege of the teeniest, tiniest of smiles, and put an arm protectively around her, in return.

He found himself yawning, blinking as drowsiness gradually washed over him the longer he lay there.

His eyelids slowly slid shut, the faintly lingering caution he had fading way to the need for rest.

He breathed deeply, and soon, he was fast asleep.


	8. Pinstripes and Lousy Beaches

**A/N** Well, this is it! The final chapter. Happy reading, and I hope you like it. =)

* * *

"Doctor, stop fidgeting with it and just put it on." Rose called from down the aisle.

"I'm _trying_ , it won't fit. What is it with humans and teeny tiny pockets?" the Doctor groused, voice muffled as it carried through the changing room door.

"Well try the other one then." she said absently, picking out a few pairs of plain black socks that looked like they'd fit him reasonably well and added them to the growing pile of clothing.

"What about this?" he asked, throwing the door open to reveal a bright red button-down and matching slacks with some sort of black and yellow duck-patterned tie half-strung around his collar.

She raised an eyebrow at the frankly strange outfit, and said, "I thought you liked less flashy colors?"

"Yeah, but this looked adventurous. Don't you think?"

She smiled a little as he straightened his collar.

"I'm not sure the world is ready for that kind of a fashion statement, Doctor." she teased, pointing back to the changing room, "Off you pop, mister. Don't worry about being adventurous. You've got plenty of that without the outfit. Just try something you'd actually like to wear. _That would fit in this time period_." she amended quickly before he could find the obvious loophole in that argument.

After breakfast, Rose had decided to take the Doctor out for a shopping trip, on the grounds that he really needed more than one shirt and the single pair of sneakers for the foreseeable future. She was stocking up on the basics, but let him wander as he pleased. It was proving to be an interesting experience.

"This?" he asked, sounding a little frazzled.

She turned around and immediately started giggling. "Are you planning on going punk now?"

"Rose, this is ridiculous. What passes as normal here?" the Doctor huffed, struggling with the zip on some sort of biker jacket. The grimacing skull t-shirt peeking out from underneath it was even better.

She shook her head, still laughing, and pointed down to a section farther along. "Doctor, forget about normal. You've never been normal. When I said something 'that would fit in this time period' I meant don't go walking about in something from the costume department. Just wear what you like. They've got some suits down that way if you want to try 'em out."

When he came back in a maroon suit she smiled, and he pointed an accusing finger at her, "Oi, don't you start again. What's wrong with this?"

In answer, she dug out a pair of dark grey Converse from the shelf and tossed them to him, saying goodnaturedly, "Can't go dashing about in just your socks."

"Ah, true enough." he shoved his feet into the shoes and quickly did up the laces. Straightening, he brushed off the jacket, gave a little spin, and asked, "Well, what do you think?"

"Much better." she nodded decisively. "Do you like it?"

" _Yup_ , fits like a glove. Love the shoes." he beamed.

"Why don't you go see if you can find anymore you like. Mum can have them altered later if you want. Probably need some more shirts too." she added thoughtfully. "I'll just grab a few more things and meet you at the front, yeah?"

"Whatever you say, Rose Tyler." he beamed, spinning on his heels and marching off towards the suit section again.

By the time the Doctor had finished picking out the rest of his new closet material, Rose had made another full lap through the store, rounding up everything from a toothbrush to a pair of red mittens with little cartoony reindeer on them she thought he'd like.

"Find anything?" she asked, her face deadpan.

He lifted both arms, each drooping under the veritable piles of clothing. "Enough to go on." he replied nonchalantly. "You were the one who said I need clothes, Rose Tyler, so here I am, getting clothes."

"Fair enough." she grinned. She held up a roll of ties in various colors and patterns. "Grabbed a few of these too. You don't have to get them, 'course, but I thought you might want 'em."

"Good idea. I completely forgot about ties. _Well_ , other than the ducks."

"Snatched a few more pairs of chucks too. Simple colors, but they should match well enough with whatever you've picked out." She piled everything onto the checkout—no small feat given the quantity of shopping they'd done—and then sighed heavily. "I forgot mum's tea. Do you think you could handle all this?"

"I think I'm quite capable of working a simple chip and pin machine, Rose. It's hardly the pinnacle of even Earth technology." he replied condescendingly.

She gave him a little shove. "Not that, you git, and you know it. Right, I'll be back in a tick."

Rose jogged off towards the food department, leaving the Doctor with the—in his opinion—far too large assortment of closet choices and general living items. Who needed ten pairs of socks anyway? He shook his head and got to work.

By the time Rose had picked out the right tea and made it back to the checkout, the Doctor had everything packed into six oversized bags, all evenly distributed between both arms.

"Looks like you did a good job of that." she remarked, looking a little surprised.

"Like I said: primitive Earth technology can't hold me down."

"Mmm, off on that alien bit again I see. Always loved that." she said drily.

"Well, all right, I suppose it's not all bad… Really quite ingenious given humans' propensity to—" Rose gave him a look and he trailed off with an apologetic, "Sorry."

"S'alright. Ready to go back?" she asked, ringing up the tea and putting it in a bag all in one swift movement.

He pulled back, suddenly reserved, fingers twitching under their load as he tilted his head.

"Actually," he replied after a moment, his expression surprisingly… withdrawn? Emotionless? "I was hoping we could make a little detour to a spot near here. I looked it up while you were gone, and I think you'll… _Well_ , I think you'll like it."

She shot him a curious look, eyebrows raising just a fraction in that little quizzical way they always did, but she nodded. "All right, Doctor. Let's go."

They drove for quite a ways before the Doctor had them pull over.

The river stretched out endlessly, a patch of silty, sandy shore eking out a path amongst the miniature swells.

"I wanted to show you, but it's a bit colder and, well, less impressive than I was hoping." he explained, jamming his hands in his pockets and surveying the windy beach.

"I never knew this was here." Rose marvelled.

"Yup. Amazing what you can find with satellite footage. But this isn't quite what I'd planned…" he popped the trunk and started rifling through their purchases, saying, "I'll just be a minute. Want to change into something that doesn't have ketchup on it, if you don't mind. Won't be a mo'."

She mumbled some sort of acquiescence, and he left her staring out across the water, hair whipped about by the bracing wind.

He ducked into a nearby toilet and slipped into one of his new suits. He paused for a moment before he slid it on, wondering if this was all a little too much, but then he shrugged that thought off. It was just a suit. Besides, he didn't want to keep her waiting any more than necessary. They didn't have the best track record with beaches, historically.

The Doctor was still a ways off along the beach, walking towards her, when she eventually turned to face him. She gasped, greetings and questions abruptly cut off as her eyes bored into him.

He uncertainly closed some more of the distance between them, hands jamming into his pockets as he watched her.

"Is this… is this all right?" he asked, hesitant and questioning.

Her gaze roamed over his brown and blue pinstripe suit—exactly the same as the one he'd had before, that the _other_ Doctor was undoubtably wearing—until finally she dragged her eyes up to meet his own.

"Yeah." she said a little breathlessly, with that dazed, clouded look lingering on her face and in the furrow of her brow.

"'Cause I thought… if this is the one life I've got to spend, Rose Tyler, well, I'd better make it a good one. Start things off properly."

"You know how to pick a location." she laughed roughly, staring wild-eyed at the patchy little beach and gloomy skies lowering across the countryside.

She closed the last few steps between them and reached out a hand to him before wavering, fingertips hovering in-between as she hesitated.

"Can I…" she paused, and his heart sank as he saw the turmoil, the desperation and fear bubbling up in her again, but she swallowed and tried again, "Can I touch you, or… Doctor, I swear if you're having me on again I'm going to—"

"No, no, no," he hurriedly explained, "100% solid. Definitely here. Completely—"

This time, he was cut off, as Rose placed her hand against his cheek, and he fell abruptly silent. They were both startled at the contact, neither of them quite adjusted to the idea that they were really here. Actually here. Properly here. No holograms. No doubles. No goodbyes.

Not this time.

Neither of them seemed willing to break the silence. Dared not interrupt the moment for fear that it might vanish like all the previous ones had. They stared at each other, completely still, save for the wind lashing against them. The air hung heavy with everything they would not say, that they would not burden this one, fleeting, solitary moment with.

"I—" Rose choked, voice cracking.

As if her squeak had been the impetus that each was waiting for to transform their stillness into something else, the Doctor reached out, wrapped his arms tightly around her, ignoring any reasons he told himself why he shouldn't, and pulled her into a hug. She buried her head in his shoulder, and pulled him closer.

Instinctively, he tilted his head to press a kiss to the top of her head, letting his cheek rest against her hair, and while each seemed hyper-aware of the other and their movements, neither of them was expecting it. But far from making her pull back, if anything, she just clung more tightly.

"This isn't what I wanted to show you." he told her quietly after they had stayed like that for a long—but still all too short—while.

He thought she might break the contact at that, but, surprisingly, she stayed exactly where she was, and mumbled, "What did you want to show me?"

Now he did have to break their hug, loathed though he was to do so. He felt a chill as the brisk air moved between them, each of them pulling back reluctantly.

He kept one hand threaded through hers as he reached into his suit pocket with the other and pulled out a small chunk of sandy-brown coral.

"Do you remember this?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Lucky, is it?" she ventured, biting her lip, no sign of recognition on her face.

For a moment, the Doctor was worried. This had been a fairly big part of their last unceremonious beach outing, after all. But, then again, it had been a rather _distracting_ trip in a number of ways...

He let the thought slide, and continued, "Not as such, but for us it is. It's a piece of the TARDIS. With a little luck and a bit of jiggery-pokery I should be able to get it to sprout up just fine. Could go rattle around the universe again in, _ooh_ … about a month? 'Course that's all hinging on if Donna's maths was right—which it is."

"Hold on a minute," Rose said, staring at the lump of coral in the Doctor's hand, "This could…" she looked up at him, "You could grow a new TARDIS?"

"Yup. Easy peasy. Well, maybe not so easy, and I never quite got the 'peasy' part of that, but—" he broke off as he saw that she wasn't exactly smiling. "What is it?" he asked, mood sobering immediately.

"Nothing." she deflected.

"No, really, what is it?"

"I don't know, it's just…"

He could feel the frown tugging at his face, but he couldn't quite suppress it. He watched her struggle to some sort of answer, a cold knot starting to form in his stomach.

"Do you want—" he cut himself off, rephrasing because he didn't want her to think he was running off again, "That is… there's no rush. Just, if you want…"

She stared at him, still concerningly quiet.

He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry as sandpaper. His stomach seemed to have dropped out entirely.

"All right then. No problem." he said cheerily, "I'll just chuck it in some drawer and that's the end of that." He grinned, the muscles in his face almost painfully tight.

"Doctor."

He stared down at his shoes, his face a careful blank. He wasn't about to pressure her into anything. But he was having a hard time masking his disappointment. Greater than that, like an undercurrent that was threatening to pull him out to sea, was the fear of having really lost the TARDIS.

His head was so achingly empty. Silent as a grave. And wasn't that appropriate? Every thought jangled and echoed back at him disconcertingly. He wanted to keep running, keep rambling just to fill that awful silence.

But there was something else there too, nearly lost in the endless, barren background. It was quiet, not quite as viscerally linked as his time and space ship had been, but it was also warm, and vibrant, and had been missing for such a long time.

Rose squeezed his hand as she tried to catch his attention, but he didn't fancy his chances of maintaining that fragile facade if he had to look at her.

"Doctor." she repeated a little more sharply.

He steeled himself then, and met her gaze unevenly—because this wasn't helping either—careful to keep his expression impassive.

"I do want that. Of course I do. You know that." her brow furrowed, and she asked, clarifying, "You do, don't you?"

He wasn't sure that he did. He had always thought she rather liked travelling. He just wasn't sure if that's how she still felt. And, once again, this wasn't how this was supposed to turn out. Blasted beaches…

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked instead, but there was no hint of hostility there.

Rose brushed the hair out of her face with a hand. "I dunno… I've got my family here. And a job. And I do love all the travelling. That's not it. I just don't want to leave them all behind again. Before, with mum, and Mickey… it wasn't fair. It wasn't your fault, but it wasn't fair to either of them. And now with Torchwood, and Tony, and all, it's… I've got a proper life here. I can't just walk out on it."

The Doctor was genuinely confused now.

"Who said anything about walking out on anyone?" he spluttered.

She fixed him with a slightly challenging look. "Coming 'round the house to drop off laundry once every few months doesn't count as hanging about."

"I want to settle." the Doctor stated matter-of-factly.

She blinked, surprised. "You what?" was all she could manage.

"Settle. Down. I want to settle down." he explained, words all in a rush as usual, but his tone utterly serious.

"What and your idea of settling down is roaming about the universe?" she asked, disbelieving.

"Part of the time, yeah. But I was thinking we could park the TARDIS somewhere, put up some fences, maybe a little garden, walking path. All that domestic stuff. But no mortgages. That's where I draw the line."

"You're not joking?" She studied his expression carefully, and he could see she was struggling with the idea.

"Cross my hearts and hope to have a desk job. Well, _heart_ , I suppose now. Still getting used to that." he answered, maintaining steady eye contact.

"So… how would that work? Pop out to save a planet and be home in time for tea?"

"If you want. Point is, Rose Tyler, we can go wherever, whenever we want and still be within hollering distance of your mother."

Rose considered this for a stretch, shaking her head a little. "I still can't wrap my head around this." she laughed, gazing up at him intently, "You need the TARDIS. And the adventuring. I wanted you to have that. Never expected anything less. And this is… you're sure you're up for the domestic stuff? Really sure?"

"Yes. Really, positively sure. Now, it'll probably be an absolute mess, and I'm sure it'll go horribly wrong somewhere along the line, but that's nothing new, is it? All our adventures go a bit sideways. But I want to try."

Her lips curled into a smile, and she asked, "You know it'll mean being around my mum every time a holiday or work function comes about, right?"

He pulled a face. "Ugh, way to sour my grand plans, Rose. I suppose I can learn to live with it… Or, make myself scarce when she's around. She's your mother, not mine."

They considered each other for a beat, the Doctor dropping his pseudo-grumpy demeanor and begrudgingly returning her cheeky smile.

"How long are you going to stay with me?" Rose asked unexpectedly.

"As long as you want me to." he replied with little hesitation, letting honesty guide the words more than the promise he wanted to give her, which would ultimately only ring hollow in the scheme of time.

"Guess I'm stuck with you then." she quipped, letting her tone soften as she added, "And I do—Want you here, I mean. So, that's it, right? Together then?"

He reflected on the conversation they'd had on new things. There certainly were a lot of them.

And as they stood on that tattered little beach, hand in hand, he was sure that this, at least, was definitely a good one.

"Together, Rose Tyler. However long forever lasts."


End file.
